Party: Shas

Knesset Profile: Eliyahu Yishai

Eli Yishai first entered the Knesset in 1996 and held several cabinet positions under the governments of Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert.

At the height of the second Palestinian Intifada, Yishai proposed a plan that would allow Israel to strip the citizenship of Palestinians it viewed as a threat to the state's existence.

"If I can prevent just a single attack in which a single Jew is killed then it is worth stripping the citizenship of 10 (Palestinian citizens of Israel) and more," Yishai said in August 2002 on Israel's Army Radio.

A frequent critic of negotiations with the Palestinians, in 2008 Yishai called on Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to cut off negotiations with the Palestinian Authority after a suicide bombing in the city of Dimona that killed one Israeli.

Yishai has also consistently stated that Shas' inclusion in any government pursuing negotiations with the Palestinians is strictly conditioned on a pledge to forestall negotiations over the status of Jerusalem.

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