Former OC Southern Command head, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yom-Tov Samia announced on Monday that he has decided to end his B’Yahad Party’s run in the April 9 election.
Samia announced in January that he would run with B’Yahad, which was an acronym of the Hebrew words for security of Israel, socioeconomic and democratic. He then tried to merge the party unsuccessfully with Labor, Blue and White and the Achi Israeli Party of Haredi Women’s College founder Adina Bar-Shalom that quit the election last week.
“B’Yahad tried to merge with other parties, both existing and new parties to build a significant political force ahead of the upcoming election in order to bring about change,” Samia said. “But unfortunately, these attempts to merge were unsuccessful, despite the open-mindedness we saw in our contacts.”
Polls taken for the party by two pollsters found that it had the potential to win five seats. But Samia decided not to take the chance. Without B’Yahad and Achi Israeli, 45 parties remain registered to run in the April 9 election.
The Simply Love Party, in which Jews and Arabs are running together, received an endorsement on Monday from former OC Northern Command head Amiram Levin, who ran for the Labor leadership in July 2017 and left following a spat with Labor chairman Avi Gabbay.
Also, former Maj.-Gen. Tal Rousso is eligible to run as No. 2 in the Labor Party, Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit told the Central Election Committee on Monday.
A petition had been filed to block Rousso from running on the basis that he had served in the IDF reserves until 2017. According to the law, senior IDF officers must wait a three-year cooling-off period before they can run for public service.Mandelblit explained that serving in the reserves is not the same as regular service. He said that the waiting period only applies to officers who are still in regular service. Officers who formally retired from regular services, but then continue or return to serve in a reserve capacity, are not restricted by the cooling-off period.