Israel's Religious Zionist Party will only sit in a right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, its chair Bezalel Smotrich told i24NEWS and Israel Hayom on Wednesday.
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"Netanyahu is the only one who can make a right-wing government now," Smotrich said, pointing at the recent polls projecting Likud to be the largest party in Knesset.
Smotrich said, however, that Netanyahu had not been a "perfect" right-wing leader, despite his many talents, and thus, his party would make sure to keep the right-wing agenda alive.
The politician railed against the recent Supreme Court ruling acknowledging conversion into Judaism done in Israel by the Reform and Conservative movements for the sake of the Law of Return.
He accused the Reform and Conservative movements of a desire to "erase Jerusalem," adding that the decision could pave the way to a "fictive conversion system" that will allow "Eritrean and Sudanese foreign workers" to settle down in Israel and "threaten Israel's Jewish majority."
Smotrich stressed Israel's Jewish national identity, saying to Israeli Arabs: "It's not your national state. You can live here as individual citizens with individual rights if you accept Israel as a Jewish state."
"The Likud voters are people that are religious, conservative, connected to their identity," he said, declaring that he did not have much in common with the voter base of Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.
He fervently defended Netanyahu, who is currently under trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, all denied by the PM. "These charges are unprecedented," he said, adding that Israel's Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit "broke a Basic Law" by indicting Netanyahu.
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