MK Avigdor Liberman said Tuesday that he wants to be Israel’s next prime minister, even though his Yisrael Beytenu party is consistently polling far behind the Together slate, led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.

If elections were held today, Yisrael Beytenu is projected to win some nine seats in the 120-seat Knesset, while Together would receive 24, according to a poll last week by Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister-site.

Speaking with Army Radio, Liberman said he had two goals for the upcoming election: “To replace the October 7 government” and “to be prime minister.”

“We will know how to get along after the election, and I think we proved in the ‘government of change’ as well [that] it is not necessarily the leader of the largest party who is chosen to be prime minister,” he said, referring to the short-lived Bennett-Lapid government, which he also joined.

That government, formed in 2021 and dissolved in 2022, was led first by Bennett, then by Lapid, despite the former’s Yamina party winning just seven seats compared to the latter’s Yesh Atid, which won 17. Both parties were dwarfed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, which won 30 seats but failed to translate that showing into a governing coalition.

Liberman clarified that he wouldn’t threaten to join Netanyahu in a rotation agreement as a way to force other opposition parties to yield, saying that “as far as I’m concerned, even if the world turns upside down,” Netanyahu cannot hold any........

© The Times of Israel