Bayit Yehudi Naftali Bennett attempted to shore up support in religious-Zionist stronghold Eli in Samaria Wednesday, one week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did the same.
"We voted Likud once, and they gave away Hebron. We voted Likud again and we got the [Gaza] disengagement. We voted Likud again and we got the Bar-Ilan speech [in which Netanyahu expressed support for a demilitarized Palestinian state]. We can only stop these things if we are there [in the government]," Bennett declared at Eli's renowned Bnei David pre-military academy.
Netanyahu's visit was a rare one so far into the West Bank and was seen by many as an encroachment on Bayit Yehudi's turf.
While the prime minister was in Eli, he openly encouraged Bayit Yehudi's voters to move to Likud, although the two parties have a loose non-aggression pact, by saying no matter what the former's size, Netanyahu will include them in a coalition, but Likud must be very large in order to form a government.
"We started a major process and today we have a hand on the wheel," Bennett said. "Netanyahu is the driver, but for the first time, we have a hand on the wheel." For Bayit Yehudi to keep its hand on the wheel, it must be a big enough party, he added.
Bennett told the students that he wants Bayit Yehudi to continue growing "so we can continue doing what we did for the people of Israel, and we did a lot: We helped the economy, we stopped prisoner releases, we passed the referendum law [on sovereign land concessions] that was just a dream for many years and we put [Palestinian terrorists] released in the Schalit deal back in prison."
The Bayit Yehudi leader admitted that his party knows it could improve its performance, using a military metaphor to encourage "anyone who sees what can be fixed [to] help carry the stretcher and have an influence."