Labor leader Shelly Yacimovich on Friday said that she had been offered the opportunity by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to be finance minister, but did not wish to be the "hangman" of a government whose policies were in complete opposition to her party's ideals.
Yacimovich made the comments in an interview with Channel 2 hours after Likud Beytenu signed coalition agreements with Yesh Atid and Bayity Yehudi, leaving the Labor leader to lead the opposition.
She said that her refusal to join the government was not a personal slight against Netanyahu, but rather the result of deep ideological difference between the prime minister's economic world view and that of the Labor party. Yacimovich stated that she had promised during the election campaign not to join Netanyahu's government and she kept that promise.
The Labor leader said that because of the large ideological gap between the parties, coalition negotiations between the parties did not go very far into detail.
Yacimovich addressed recent public comments by Shas co-leader Arye Deri that Labor and Shas held the same socio-economic outlook, saying that she had not "spoken to Deri in years." She stated that the "public hug" from Deri was not to her liking. The Labor leader stated that while both Shas and Labor wanted the state to worry more for its citizens' welfare, Shas was a sectoral party concerned only with its own constituents.
Asked if she would be meeting with US President Barack Obama on his upcoming visit to Israel next week, she stated that she would not officially be named opposition leader until the week after Obama's visit. She said that while she would do all in her power to meet Obama, her not being the official oppostion leader could lead Obama to rule out the meeting.