Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and Hatnuarh, the party recently launched by Tzipi Livni, both denied an Israel Radio report that respective representatives were in indirect talks with a view to appoint her as Foreign Minister in his next government.
"Livni, conducted diplomatic negotiations that were terrible and flawed, and totally unacceptable to me," Netanyahu reportedly told Likud members.
"There’s no chance that I’d let her anywhere near that area, on the assumption that she would be a member of a government led by me."
Likud members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and mayors of West Bank settlements warned Netanyahu on Wednesday not to form a coalition with center-left parties at the expense of traditional Likud allies on the right side of the political spectrum, like Zionist religious nationalist party Bayit Hayeudi (Jewish Home).