Smotrich, Feiglin said to agree on joint run in upcoming election

1 September 2026, 6:21 pm

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Left: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends the Religious Zionism party primary in Jerusalem, July 26, 2026. Right: Moshe Feiglin attends a Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee meeting in Jerusalem, August 11, 2024. (Both Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who chairs the far-right Religious Zionism party, agrees a joint run for the upcoming elections with Moshe Feiglin, chair of Zehut, multiple Hebrew media reports say.

According to the reports, Zehut will get three of the top 10 places on the joint list, with Feiglin taking the second spot.

The move comes amid pressure from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to unite smaller right-wing parties to prevent votes from being lost should one or more of them fail to cross the electoral vote threshold. Itamar Ben Gvir has refused to run his Otzma Yehudit party together with Smotrich again, as has Ofer Winter and his new People of Israel party.

Sources involved in the talks say that the announcement of the formation of the “technical bloc” should be come soon.

Feiglin’s Zehut (Identity) party failed to cross the electoral threshold the last time it ran, in 2019, and is now polling at less than 1%.

Smotrich is also polling on the cusp of the threshold.