The New Right Party led by Ayelet Shaked and the United Right party led by Rafi Peretz took a big step closer to creating a unified list on Sunday when Peretz announced that he would allow Shaked to lead a unified party should a final agreement between the two parties be reached.

Peretz made an official announcement to the press on Sunday evening stating: “I am happy to announce that I spoke with Ayelet Shaked a few moments ago and we agreed that out of a sense of national responsibility and due to the worry that a right-wing Zionist government would not be able to form otherwise, that Ayelet should head our unified party. Unity is the common goal that we all share. We will meet tonight to finalize the logistics involved in running together and we will begin our campaign.”

Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked spoke to reporters as she entered the meeting where the discussion was set to take place that: “The direction of the new party is one of unity, between all the various parties on the right-wing side of the spectrum. I believe in this ideal and have been working towards it for a long time.”

Shaked, who together with former Education Minister and Jewish Home party head Naftali Bennett broke off from the aforementioned party back in December added: “I hope that we will see white smoke rising tonight so that we can move on to the second stage of bringing in all of the right-wing parties under one united banner.”

Three other parties on the right have not yet agreed to join the unified party due to various considerations. Otzma Yehudit, Zehut and the newly formed Noam have not joined the union. Otzma Yehudit and Noam formed their own technical bloc and unified their two parties for the upcoming election. Whereas Zehut’s Moshe Feiglin said that Shaked decided to not include his party, which received over 100,000 votes in the previous election enough to gain 2.5 knesset seats, but not enough to pass the threshold.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)