Likud approves Netanyahu’s plan to expand his control over party slate

Likud’s roughly 4,500-member Central Committee approved a proposal on Monday to significantly expand Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s control over the party’s Knesset slate, granting him eight reserved slots in the top 29 places on the list ahead of the October 27 election.

After months of delayed negotiations and Netanyahu’s failed efforts to cancel primaries and instead form a committee to select candidates, he will now control the 3rd, 5th, 9th, 11th, 15th, 18th, 26th and 29th spots on the list, giving the premier unprecedented influence over more than a third of the party’s realistic slate.

A realistic slate refers to the number of candidates from that party realistically expected to win a Knesset seat, which is based on the percentage of the total vote the party gets. The higher up on the slate, the better a candidate’s chances of making it into the Knesset.

With Likud currently polling at 21-23 seats, even if the party significantly outperforms current expectations and wins 30 seats, the eight reserved slots would leave only 18 positions to be filled through the party primary, with more than twice as many incumbent lawmakers and ministers expected to compete for them.

It passed despite rare public dissent from within Likud, led by MK David Bitan, who argued it would push incumbent lawmakers down the list in favor of Netanyahu’s handpicked candidates.

The premier’s push for reserved slots is in part based on concerns that primaries could elevate candidates who are highly popular among the Likud base — including MK Tally Gotliv and ministers Shlomo Karhi and May Golan — but who internal party polling suggests are less appealing to moderate right-wing and swing voters whose support could prove decisive in the upcoming national election.

Likud uses a complex primary system to determine much, though not all, of its candidate list, and has long prided itself on its internal democratic processes.

The vote came a day after Likud’s internal court struck down Netanyahu’s bid to allow the party to cancel its August 17 primary in the event of a “wartime situation” and instead select candidates through an appointed committee controlled by the premier.

The party said that more than 3,400 members, about 75% of the Likud Central Committee, participated in the vote.

In a video released before the vote on Monday, Bitan urged Central Committee members to reject the proposal, accusing Likud Constitution Committee chairman and minister Haim Katz of “building a faction within a faction” and suggesting that Katz had backed the premier’s proposal, first approved by his committee, in exchange for a reserved slot for himself or an ally.

Bitan has said several of the reserved slots are expected to go to politicians outside Likud, including Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, whose New Hope faction merged with Likud last year. Media reports have also suggested New Hope MKs Ze’ev Elkin and Michel Buskila, as well as either Katz or his close ally MK Eti Atiya, could receive reserved spots.

Bitan and others have also speculated that the prime minister intends to use two slots for a member of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit parties, in a bid to incentivize the two parties to run together on a joint list, since Smotrich’s party has been hovering around the electoral threshold for months.

According to Dr. Assaf Shapira, head of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Political Reform Program, the arrangement would allow Netanyahu to allocate places on Likud’s slate to candidates formally representing allied parties, even though they would not remain part of the Likud faction after the election, which is what they did in the last election in 2021.

“Likud held one place for Ofir Sofer from Religious Zionism and ran as a joint list between Likud and Sofer’s one-man faction, which was formed only for this purpose,” Shapira said of the 2021 election. “Immediately after the election, his ‘party’ split from Likud and Sofer joined Religious Zionism. It was part of a broader political deal intended to convince Smotrich to run on a joint list with Ben Gvir.”

The same mechanism could now allow Netanyahu to reserve realistic places on the Likud slate for candidates from Religious Zionism or Otzma Yehudit. Doing so would strengthen Netanyahu’s prospects of forming a coalition by encouraging Smotrich and Ben Gvir to run together, maximizing the right-wing bloc’s overall seat count and reducing the risk of either party failing to cross the electoral threshold, but further reduce the number of winnable positions available to Likud candidates.

The expectation that many of the reserved slots could go to politicians from outside Likud as part of the prime minister’s efforts to bolster his coalition has fueled anger among some party lawmakers, even as others have sought to curry favor with Netanyahu in hopes of securing one of the few remaining slots on the list.

Karhi urged activists in his own video to vote in favor of the proposal and “stand behind the prime minister until victory.” Defense Minister Israel Katz, Transportation Minister Miri Regev, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and coalition whip Ofir Katz were among the many other ministers and lawmakers who released videos urging voters to support the measure.