Let the wild rumpus begin: 8 things to know for August 2

1. It’s officially election season: It wouldn’t be an election without some drama and Thursday night’s deadline for parties to submit their slates had more than a little as parties rushed to file their lists.

• In all, 32 parties will run for spots in the Knesset, though only nine will seemingly get in barring any major surprises in the next 50 days.
• The last time such a small number got into the Knesset was never. The previous low was 10, set several times. The low number is likely a reflection of both the high threshold (3.25%) and parties joining forces either to push out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or keep him in power.
• The 32 is down from 47 parties that ran in the last election. The lower number is a result of mergers and perhaps some smaller parties that shot their wad in April and no longer have strength/pockets to run again.
• “It was a relatively calm night,” election official Orly Adas tells Army Radio.

2. Powerless: The extremist Otzma Yehudit party was the author of what drama there was on Thursday night. Though the party is seen as having almost no chance of crossing the threshold, there was enough drama to shoot the story to the top of the media agenda, with even left-leaning broadsheet Haaretz leading its print edition with the story.

• “Until the last moment efforts continued — including via senior Likud officials — to include Otzma representatives on the list, but in the end the efforts failed,” Makor Rishon reports.
• Reporting on the excitement from the scene in a twitter thread that will one day be optioned into a movie, Times of Israel’s Raoul Wootliff says Otzma head Itamar Ben Gvir was about to go into the main conference room to register his party when Jewish Home’s Moti Yogev ran up to him and handed him a phone.

Motti Yogev just ran to Ben Gvir before he went into the Central Elections Committee room and gave him a phone. He's talking on it now pic.twitter.com/cviR7KdMu9

— Raoul Wootliff (@RaoulWootliff) August 1, 2019

• Israel Hayom, which had pushed the Likud-backed merger hard, has surprisingly little to say about it failing beyond “it failed.”
• The lack of commentary may be because so many pundits were so sure it would come together in the end.
• “My heart goes out to all the campaigns of ‘you’ve lost all shame and made a deal with Kahanists where is the moderate right-wing of old’ which had already been prepared by all the center-left parties and are now dead,” writes Channel 13’s Akiva Novick.

3. Two rights make a fight: With the possibility of unity behind them, the parties wasted little time in bringing out the knives, and despite being shunted down to fourth place of a party he once led, Naftali Bennett takes the brunt of the blame/praise.

• “There were officials who, for reasons of ego, blew this matter up and I direct the blame at [United Right candidate] Naftali Bennett,” Ben Gvir is quoted telling the media just before filing Thursday night.
• On Friday morning Transportation Minister and Union of Right-Wing Parties MK Bezalel Smotrich makes some headlines by shooting back, tweeting — supposedly in Ben Gvir’s voice — “If only they gave me a spot a little higher I would run to sit with Bennett who made a pact with [Yair] Lapid and with that radical leftist Smotrich who approved building for Arabs in Area C. But they only gave me the eighth spot, so I’ll stay outside and attack them with lies to burn up votes on the right and bring about a leftist government.”
• Channel 13 reporter Barak Ravid tweets that he has “much respect for Naftali Bennett, who kept the Kahanist racists out the Knesset (through their Siamese twin Smotrich will be there.) Jeers to Ayelet Shaked who chased after the Kahanists and to Netanyahu who fought for them day and night. Sad and embarrassing: the normalization Israel has given Ben Gvir. I’m comforted by the fact that he’ll continue to shout from studios and not the plenum.”

4. Liberman’s moment: ToI’s Wootliff notes that Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman was pretty much the only one to file his party’s slate without any merger hubbub.

• “Being the first to finalize its electoral list, and doing so without the need for other partners, symbolized the image of Yisrael Beytenu as a sturdy, trustworthy and even centrist party that Liberman has cultivated over the past few weeks.”
• Haaretz’s Ravit Hecht also calls Liberman “the star of these elections,” despite just a short while ago being “a caricature of a defense minister whose short term is only remembered for his failed promise to assassinate [Hamas head Ismail] Haniyeh within 48 hours.”

5. Oh good, more polls: A poll published by Channel 13 Thursday night shows that Liberman’s stock is on the rise.

• Not only does he jump to 11 seats in the survey, but it also shows 50% of respondents want his proposed unity government between Likud and Blue and White, whereas only 23% say they want a coalition of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties.
• Another poll by Israel Hayom shows Liberman holding steady at 10. It also has Likud slightly ahead of Blue and White 30-28, and everybody else in the low teens or single digits.
• But even with only a few seats, both polls show that Liberman remains the kingmaker with neither side able to form a government without him.

6. Come again? Asked in a scrum of reporters whether he would be open to joining to a unity government with Netanyahu following the rollout of the US peace plan, Gantz appeared to reply in the affirmative.

• “We declared that Israel is before everything and that anything that is good for Israel before everything, we’ll support,” Gantz said.
• Gantz quickly backtracked after his comments made headlines and said he had not heard the question correctly, complaining of hearing problems in his right ear because of shooting M-16 rifles from that side.
• Blue and White MK Chili Tropper confirms to Army radio that Gantz has trouble hearing on the right side, telling the station that he always sits to his left.
• Nonetheless, the snafu ends up with Gantz getting an earful.
• Ynet accuses Gantz of “embarrassing the party,” and surmises that perhaps it wasn’t a case of bad hearing, but the truth slipping out.
• Israel Hayom’s Amnon Lord meanwhile pokes fun at the handicap, seemingly just for fun: “Even with his damaged hearing, Gantz should consider backing Netanyahu,” he writes, citing the premier’s relationships with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

7. Russian roulette: In Haaretz, Yossi Verter writes that Likud activists are increasingly baffled by Netanyahu’s decision to try and attack Liberman and play up his Russian bona fides.

• “The Likudniks don’t understand why Netanyahu isn’t assailing Blue and White and is instead dragging himself, together with a few ex-lawmakers from Kulanu and Yisrael Beytenu, into focusing his efforts on the bastion of immigrants from the former Soviet Union,” he writes. “So far, his fixation on those voters is only helping Lieberman. His party has stabilized at 10 seats in the polls – twice as many MKs as it has in the outgoing Knesset. Three of the five new seats forecasted come from Likud voters.”
• Former MK Roman Bronfman tells Al-Monitor that playing up Putin ties may end up backfiring for the PM.
• “You have to understand that most immigrants didn’t come from Russia but from the other republics of the former Soviet Union — Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and others,”he says.. “They are about two-thirds, compared to a third [from Russia].… Those who came from Russia proper are a minority. There’s also immigration in recent years to Israel from Putin’s Russia and [those waves do] not tend to support him. If someone in the Likud thought that this move would cause Russian speakers in Israel to change their votes and to support the Likud because of Netanyahu’s ties to Putin, he is very mistaken.”

8. Why not unity? On the other side, there are also signs that Netanyahu might not be so opposed to a unity government.

• Sima Kadom writes in Yedioth that even though Netanyahu has rejected the idea, he thinks there’s a better chance that Gantz will split his Israel Resilience off of Blue and White and join up with him than Liberman actually doing so.
• “Liberman knows that Netanyahu cannot get away from Shaked and Bennett and the ultra-Orthodox. So when he says he’ll only go for a unity government without Haredim and religious, it’s as if he is saying” I won’t join Netanyahu.
• Walla’s Tal Shalev meanwhile, says that Netanyahu is happy to see that Labor-Gesher and Democratic Camp failed to come together, as it means there’s a chance only one will get in.
• “If [Labor-Gesher heads] Amir Peretz and Orly Levy-Abekasis somehow survive the pogrom, they could be great potential partners in coalition talks. The more options Netanyahu has, the more Liberman is weakened, and he will have to think of a new strategy.