Shaked reaches out to Peretz to begin negotiations to form united list

Shaked said the conversation was positive and that they agreed to meet in the days ahead.

"The responsibility to unite rests on our shoulders," she said. "This is our obligation. I intend to do everything to ensure that it happens."

Peretz wrote his supporters on Monday that the negotiations would be complex. "We will continue to act responsibly and loyally as we did in the previous elections, and we will succeed, with God's help, to build with our partners a diverse list that represents our religious Zionism and will win many mandates."

National Union leader Bezalel Smotrich revealed in an interview with KAN Radio that Peretz is not ruling out letting Shaked head the list.

Smotrich said that he himself would give up his own place of leadership in the Union of Right-wing Parties, which the National Union and Bayit Yehudi formed ahead of the last elections.

Shaked's announcement that she would head the New Right met some dissent. In a conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu with leader of the Union of Right-Wing Parties (URP), Netanyahu reportedly requested that he not give Shaked the number-one spot.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a national-religious leader, said at the beginning of July that Shaked could not lead the URP, because she is a secular woman. When asked on KAN Radio if a religious woman could be a party leader, he said, “It’s not okay, the complicated whirlwind of politics is not the arena for the female role.”

 

Shaked responded to the criticism by tweeting, “Just a reminder that a woman can do anything: travel, be a mother, be a party leader, and a mayor, and a CEO of a company and also a head of state.”

On Monday morning, however, Aviner retracted that statement with Radio Army, but said that Shaked could not lead the party because she is not religious.