Likud to highlight Mofaz's Likud past

MK Danon distributes letter in which Mofaz criticized Ariel Sharon for leaving Likud to form Kadima.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Shaul Mofaz smiling at Knesset_370 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Shaul Mofaz smiling at Knesset_370
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
The star of the Likud’s anti- Shaul Mofaz campaign will be none other than... Shaul Mofaz, Likud MKs said Monday.
During Mofaz’s maiden speech to the Knesset as opposition leader Monday, Likud MK Danny Danon distributed copies of a letter Mofaz had sent to Likud members when he was running for leadership of the party on December 5, 2005.
He quit the party and defected to Kadima less than a week later.
In the letter, Mofaz promised to safeguard Jewish settlements and criticized then-prime minister Ariel Sharon for leaving Likud to form Kadima with Labor MKs Shimon Peres, Dalia Itzik and Haim Ramon.
“The Likud under my leadership will present our nationalist outlook: Maintaining Israel’s national and strategic assets, seeing diplomatic negotiations as a tool to achieve security for the citizens, and conditioning advancement in the negotiations on stopping terror,” he wrote. “I am completely obligated to the development and settlement of Judea and Samaria, Jordan Valley, Golan Heights, and, of course, keeping Jerusalem united and whole as Israel’s eternal capital.”
Mofaz also told fellow party members he would have been allowed to continue holding the defense portfolio if he had jumped ship to Kadima, but he decided to reject the offer and remain in the Likud.
“I won’t leave my home,” he wrote. “I intend to remain in the Likud under any circumstances and fight for its path.”
Mofaz, who has tried to present himself lately as a socioeconomic leader, wrote in the letter that the Likud had the best socioeconomic policies and that he intended to advance those espoused by the party’s late former leader, Menachem Begin.
Danon tried to read the letter aloud to Mofaz as the new opposition head addressed the plenum. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin stopped Danon and told him that if he wanted to read the letter, he could call a press conference.
“Mofaz lacks an identity, values and a political spine,” Danon said. “This letter reveals Mofaz’s true face.”