Blue and White swerving Right

KAN reported that Blue and White was offering Labor and Meretz portfolios in a potential government based on seats in the previous Knesset in return for uniting.

By GIL HOFFMAN
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and MK Yair Lapid (photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/MAARIV)
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and MK Yair Lapid
(photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/MAARIV)
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz has shifted his party to the right ahead of the March 2 election, following in-depth surveys, sources close to Gantz told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
The party is reaching out to liberal right-wing voters, who are uncomfortable with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alleged corruption, and children of Russian immigrants, who never voted for Yisrael Beytenu.
Blue and White is also speaking more to lower socioeconomic echelons. To that end, Gantz will pay a visit on Tuesday to Yeroham, a development town in the South, where he volunteered for years, improving the education system alongside future Blue and White MKs Michael Biton and Chili Tropper.
In an effort to be able to form a government after the votes are counted, Blue and White will not call for a secular coalition, as the party did before the September election. Sources close to Gantz said he saw Shas and United Torah Judaism as key for building a future coalition.
Unlike past elections when Blue and White relied on American strategists who did not instruct the party to move rightward, this time, Blue and White decided that American strategists cost too much and do not contribute enough to justify it.
Blue and White’s Israeli strategist is Israel Bachar, who is working his third election for the party and ran successful campaigns in the past for Likud and Shas. After the April election, Bachar lamented that Blue and White did not emphasize its socioeconomic agenda.
Turning rightward could help reassure Labor-Gesher leader Amir Peretz that the party will not try to take votes away from him. Top Blue and White officials have been pressuring Peretz to run together with Meretz, but he has resisted the pressure.
KAN reported that Blue and White was offering Labor and Meretz portfolios in a potential government, based on seats in the previous Knesset, in return for uniting.
A Blue and White official close to Gantz confirmed that the party is trying to be creative and offer different guarantees and ideas to facilitate a merger and prevent the loss of center-left and leftist votes.