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Reports in Israel claim that former-prime minister Ehud Olmert and former-foreign minister Tzipi Livni have agreed not to run against each other in the upcoming elections, as a new poll indicates that a new party with the pair at the helm could be elected the largest in the Knesset.

Speculation has been rife for several weeks that Olmert and Livni will both make a return to politics as candidates in the upcoming election. Although it remains unclear whether the duo will actually make a comeback, Olmert and Livni met for an hour and a half yesterday and reportedly concluded that they will either both run on the same list or not run at all.

The Jerusalem Post quotes a source close to Olmert saying, “There is no chance that one of them will run against the other. Either there will be cooperation in one party or one or two of them will not run.”

A poll published in Haaretz this morning indicated that a party including Olmert, Livni and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid would narrowly defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party. However, it also revealed that even in such a scenario a ‘right-wing bloc’ would remain larger than the ‘left-wing bloc’, which would likely place Netanyahu in a better position to form a coalition than an Olmert-Livni led party.

Meanwhile, former Shas leader Aryeh Deri has finally returned to politics, rejoining the religious party after its Council of Torah Sages approved an agreement which will see Deri, current party leader Eli Yishai and Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Attias jointly head the party for the duration of the election campaign. Deri had previously led Shas to huge electoral success before being convicted of bribery in 2000.