Shas Chairman Minister Aryeh Deri said today (Sunday) that he is not ruling out Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid, but claims that he does not see a scenario in which his party sits in the government under Lapid.
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In an interview with Sheli Yachimovich and Yigal Guetta on the program 'Sheli and Guetta' on Channel B, Deri said: "I don't think it's practical because we will form a national government headed by Netanyahu. It's convenient for Lapid not to attack us now. I never disqualified Lapid, he disqualified me and now he's ignoring me.".
However, not long after the interview, Lapid actually attacked the Haredi parties: "There are parties in the Knesset that women are not allowed to be elected to, the Prime Minister calls them natural partners, it's an insane situation. We've gotten used to it. We accept what we're not allowed to accept just because it's been going on for many years.".
In the interview, Deri also addressed Gideon Sa'ar's attacks on the Haredim: "Gideon himself does not believe what he said. The evidence for this is that for many months he and his friends tried to schedule meetings and plan things. He understands that the Haredim are his partners and without them he has no government.
""He says things that are not true in order to save the mandates he still has by hitting the Haredim. They are in the middle of a campaign, the day after the elections they will try to embrace the Haredim.".
Regarding the possibilities of forming a government after the elections, the Shas chairman said: "From what I see, I said this two months ago, the next prime minister will be Netanyahu with the haredim, the religious, and Bennett. And when the government is formed, Saar will also come. I estimate that Gideon and Naftali have a chance of scraping a single-digit number of seats. I don't rule out Shas being a bigger party than them. We will get 61 or more without Saar and Lieberman and form a government. In the second stage, the government will expand to more than that. I don't see a possibility that it won't.".
