Zehut chairman Moshe Feiglin will be willing to compromise on the path to promoting legalization of light drugs in the next Knesset, assuming that the next coalition government will be cobbled together by Benjamin Netanyahu, journalist Zeev Kam reported on Kan News Wednesday.
Feiglin responded on his Facebook page:
In the wake of today’s wave of fake news, the Zehut party wishes to clarify that it is fully committed to legalization and ensures that no coalition would be established in Israel without legalization.
Great forces are working to preserve the existing situation. The other parties and media people are pouring the fake news from their talking point pages to scare the public away from the only party that means what it says, and is hiding nothing. They want to make sure that whatever was will stay, and that their centers of power are preserved.
We are not interested in the procedure, only in the result, because, in the meantime, patients are dying here!
We do not care whether the credit for legalization will be attributed to the opposition, the coalition or another party!
We reiterate our commitment: there is only one truth. Zehut will not sit in any coalition which will not pass the legalization in the first Knesset session.
According to the report, in light of the opposition of the Haredi parties and the Right-Wing Union to the legalization of cannabis, Feiglin’s representatives conveyed to the prime minister that they would not insist on including the issue of legalization in the coalition agreement, as Feiglin has been telling his supporters.
Instead, Zehut would demand that Netanyahu commit to introducing legalization during the first or second Knesset session, and coordinate the bill with elements of the opposition that support legalization.
If this does not happen in the first year of the next Knesset, Feiglin will announce in advance that he would resign from the coalition.
Feiglin’s circle told Kan that they care about the results, not the process, and therefore they are ready to drop their demand from the coalition agreement, as long as they are reassured that legalization would be passed.
It should be noted that a large portion of Feiglin’s voters joined his campaign strictly over his promise to legalize cannabis, for both medical and leisure use.
The Jewish Press Online contacted several Zehut spokespersons, as well as Moshe Feiglin himself for a response. We will publish it as soon as we receive it.
