Ditching Hendel, Zionist Home chair Chili Tropper merges party into Eisenkot’s Yashar

Zionist Home chair Chili Tropper folded his party into election frontrunner Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party on Sunday, after terminating his short-lived alliance with Yoaz Hendel’s Reservists party, two days before the deadline for parties to submit their candidate lists for the October 27 election.

Tropper will now be placed in the sixth spot on the Yashar Knesset slate, while his Zionist Home colleagues, bereaved family members Shira Shapira and Elyasaf Peretz, will receive realistic spots further down the list. According to various reports, Shapira is expected to be placed tenth on the list, and Peretz will be placed either in the 20th or 21st spot.

The alliance will be a complete merger rather than a technical agreement, meaning Tropper will not be able to split his faction off from Yashar once elected.

Tropper, who stepped down from Benny Gantz’s Blue and White in May, joined forces with Hendel this summer and established the Zionist Home-Reservists just last month, with the stated goal of helping establish as broad a “Zionist government” as possible. But the party failed to rise in the polls and was hovering around the 3.25% electoral threshold.

Both Tropper and Hendel have said they won’t agree to be included in a government that relies on the Arab Ra’am party, but some reports said Eisenkot wasn’t interested in joining forces with Hendel due to fear the latter won’t accept a minority government propped up externally by Ra’am — indicating that Tropper may be open to such a possibility.

Hendel, on Sunday, attributed the decision to part ways to the “complicated political reality,” but said the pair’s “ideological partnership” remained intact.

Yashar hailed the alliance with Tropper as an opportunity to “strengthen cohesion within Israeli society.”

The Zionist Home merger into Eisenkot’s party was finalized as the Yashar candidate list began to take shape in earnest, ahead of an expected announcement of its finalized slate on Monday.

Yashar has emerged as the dominant party in the opposition in recent polls, running neck-and-neck with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, or slightly ahead of it, at around 26 seats.

Naftali Bennett’s and Yair Lapid’s B’Yachad alliance, with which Tropper also held talks, has meanwhile slid to around 14 seats. The party was officially announcing its Knesset slate on Sunday evening.

Eisenkot also welcomed Israel Prize-winning educator and social entrepreneur Adi Altschuler into Yashar on Sunday, and named her as the party’s candidate for education minister if it manages to form a government.

She appeared to be the first member of Yashar’s growing electoral slate whom the party has publicly designated as its candidate for a specific ministerial portfolio.

“Adi is one of Israel’s leading figures in education and social affairs,” Eisenkot said, citing her more than two decades of experience. “I am pleased that Adi accepted my request to be Yashar’s candidate for education minister in the government we will form.”

Altschuler, 39, founded the Krembo Wings youth movement and the Zikaron BaSalon initiative, which organizes intimate Holocaust remembrance gatherings in private homes. She also co-founded Inclu, a network of inclusive schools and kindergartens.

She was awarded the Israel Prize this year for her contributions to Israeli society and education, and received the Presidential Medal of Honor in 2023.

“We are on the cusp of change, at a historic moment, and I do not have the privilege of standing on the sidelines,” Altschuler said, thanking Eisenkot for the “meaningful offer” to serve as education minister in a government led by him.

“We will work to create a united society here and a high-quality, healthy education system that is good for children, families and all educational staff,” she added.

Left out in the cold, Hendel announced a last-minute alliance with economist Yaron Zelekha.

Zelekha, a former Finance Ministry official, has been on the ballot twice in the past with his New Economic Party, but didn’t come close to the electoral threshold either time, winning just 0.79% and 0.29% of the vote in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

He promises to “fight tycoons and the cost of living,” and has pledged to advance “full universal service,” a reference to military and national service.

Hours after that announcement, a poll by the Kan public broadcaster showed the Hendel-Zelekha merger passing the electoral threshold and getting 4 Knesset seats, complicating the potential election math with a non-aligned party. The pro-Netanyahu bloc was predicted to get 52 seats, the anti-Netanyahu bloc 51, and the Arab parties 13, meaning it would be tough for anyone to muster a 61-strong majority coalition.

According to the Kan public broadcaster, Hendel was also holding talks with Gantz and former chair of the now-defunct Yamina party, Ayelet Shaked, about possibly bringing them into the fold as well.

Hendel was formerly a member of Gantz’s Blue and White and National Unity parties before forming a brief and unsuccessful political alliance with Shaked that fell apart ahead of the November 2022 election.

However, later on Sunday evening, Shaked declared she will not run in the upcoming election, lamenting in a Facebook post that she had hoped the post-October 7 reality would end the dynamic of “two blocs that in my view are dismantling the country,” but has now concluded that a cross-bloc broad government “is impossible in the current election.”

Disgruntled Otzma Yehudit MK resigns over placement on list

Meanwhile, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announced the candidate slate for his Otzma Yehudit party on Sunday, prompting the resignation of a disgruntled MK, Zvika Fogel, after he was placed lower than he expected.

The makeup of the list reflected the shifting sphere of influence within the ultranationalist party, as Likud rebel Tally Gotliv was placed in the number two spot, directly below Ben Gvir.

Gotliv’s tumultuous move to Otzma Yehudit, announced last week, came after the firebrand lawmaker performed worse than she had hoped in the Likud primary and blamed Netanyahu for deliberately harming her chances.

The third and fourth spots on the Otzma Yehudit list went to Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf, and Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu.

MK Limor Son Har-Melech was given the fifth spot on the list, and MK Yitzhak Kroizer followed in sixth. The decision marked a slight promotion for the pair, who were respectively the party’s sixth- and seventh-ranked candidates in the 2022 election. It was also a sign of their growing prominence within the party, particularly in the case of Son Har-Melech, who has emerged as one of Otzma Yehudit’s highest-profile lawmakers and sponsored a series of controversial legislative initiatives, including the law introducing the death penalty for terrorists, a priority of Ben Gvir’s that passed in March.

Their promotion came at the expense of Fogel, however, and the formerly fifth-ranked candidate was pushed to at least seventh place. The party is projected to win seven to nine seats.

Fogel, who chairs the Knesset National Security Committee, announced his resignation shortly after the list was publicized, saying he would continue working on behalf of the country “in any way that is available to me.”

He did not specify whether he intends to join another party, run for the Knesset through another framework, or leave electoral politics altogether.