Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu seems incapable of making peace with the fact that Moshe Feiglin and his Manhigut Yehudit faction of the party is a reality, one that is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Nevertheless, a close associate of Netanyahu, Ofir Okenus, who landed the 28th position on the roster, has turned to the party’s court via attorney Prof. Yaakov Ne’eman, seeking to have Feiglin ousted from his slot, which by all accounts, guarantees him a place in the 18th Knesset.

According to the petition to the party’s court, the 20th slot was secured for a woman, and therefore, Feiglin must be pushed back. Okenus explains the petition is nothing personal against Feiglin, but a technical legal matter which must be adjudicated by the party’s legal experts.

He explains that since the women competed in the race without the secure slots, then the slots should be given to the party’s representatives of ‘districts’, explaining that Feiglin ran under a national list, disqualifying him from a district representative slot. Okenus happened to have run under a ‘district’ slot.

Some senior officials are angry at the party leader, who they say “made every possible mistake during the primaries,” explaining he focused his efforts on waging a way against Feiglin instead of working with Silvan Shalom and encouraging registered voters to come out and vote, a move that would have helped the veterans and hurt Feiglin.

They add that Bibi’s ‘recommended list’ which was distributed did not succeed, and only about one-half of his true supporters got in, leaving a difficult situation. On the other hand, Feiglin was quite successful in achieving the 20th slot and bringing in some of the candidates he recommended.

Kadima is quite pleased with the list, which is relatively right-wing, not as centrist as Netanyahu was hoping for. Kadima now plans to use this as a central election campaign theme, stating “Don’t believe Netanyahu. He was and remains right-wing, not centrist” as he is trying to portray himself in the upcoming election.

Shas also expressed criticism, but for a different reason, the lack of Sephardi representation on the Likud list. Eli Yishai stated that it is most unfortunate that Likud still does not have fair representation of the many Sephardim in the party. In addition, Yitzchak Cohen stated “Am Yisrael understands that the Likud’s genetic code lacks pigmentation”.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)