Jewish Home MKs threaten split to right-wing camp

Amid mounting coalition tensions and talk of possible early elections, a stormy Jewish Home faction meeting on Monday saw Housing Minister Uri Ariel and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett go head-to-head, with Ariel’s Tekumah sub-faction threatening to split up the party. Party leader Bennett stormed out of the meeting in anger.

Hours after the dispute, the Jewish Home party announced it would hold primaries for the party leadership on January 5, a day before the Likud primaries.

Tekumah currently has four representatives out of the Orthodox-nationalist Jewish Home’s 12 Knesset seats. The dispute between Bennett and Ariel revolved around the party list in future elections, with Bennett insisting that all candidates must run in the primaries and Ariel demanding a fixed number of Tekumah representatives.

Sources close to Bennett came down hard on Ariel for his threats, while sources in Tekumah accused Bennett of selling out the party’s values to garner more votes. During the raucous session, Bennett reportedly said that Ariel’s actions would prevent the party from being granted control of the Defense Ministry in a new coalition.

“Uri Ariel is a serial splitter and his threats are unacceptable,” the sources aligned with Bennett said. They accused Ariel of making the threats in order to secure a greater number of seats on the party list for Tekuma. “Bennett will not give in to threats of a split along the lines of ‘reserve us six slots or we’ll split,'” the unnamed sources said.

The Tekuma sources, who also wished to remain anonymous, retorted: “Bennett is afraid to discuss the character and values of the party. He would rather split up religious Zionism and sell out the values and the settler public simply in order to drum up votes among the voters of Yair Lapid.”

According to the Ynet news website, the argument broke out after representatives of the Tekuma sub-faction within the party showed up late to the meeting.

“I will not accept this, you come late on purpose,” Bennett was quoted as saying. “If you want to split up, we’ll split.” He then stormed out of the meeting.

Earlier, the Jewish home MKs affiliated with Tekumah — Ariel, Orit Strock, Eli Ben Dahan, and Zvulun Kalfa — called an emergency session and threatened to run as a separate party in future elections.

Seeking to quell tensions, Jewish Home MK Moti Yogev said in a statement that the religious Zionist community was “like a family.”

“And like a family, sometimes they raise their voices, but at the end of the day they unite on the common goals for which they have been chosen… I believe unity will triumph.”

The tensions in Jewish Home come amid broader coalition instability. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to meet separately with Bennett, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and Finance Minister Yair Lapid on Monday evening in a last-ditch effort to salvage the coalition.

The prime minister is expected to decide in the coming days whether to call for early elections, and the outcome of the meetings with the ministers — leaders of the parties that partner his Likud in the coalition — will likely drive that decision.

The meetings come against a backdrop of growing unrest surrounding the “Jewish state” bill, which would enshrine Israel’s Jewish status in its constitutional Basic Laws, as well as disagreement between Lapid and Netanyahu over the annual budget and other legislative initiatives. Livni and Lapid have said they will vote against the “Jewish state” bill if it is presented in the Knesset in its current form, even at the price of bringing down the government.