Smotrich to rejoin Knesset as MK, preserving his party’s seat total as Otzma Yehudit quits coalition

By Sam Sokol 20 January 2025, 4:40 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich leads a faction meeting of his far-right Religious Zionism party, at the Knesset in Jerusalem, January 20, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich confirms that he will return to the Knesset as an MK under the Norwegian Law, pushing Otzma Yehudit MK Yitzhak Kroizer out of parliament. The law allows ministers and deputy ministers from large factions to resign from the Knesset when appointed to the government, with their seats filled by members of their parties.

Responding to a question from The Times of Israel during his Religious Zionism party’s weekly faction meeting, Smotrich says that he’s “returning to the Knesset with joy.”

Smotrich’s decision follows the far-right Otzma Yehudit party’s exit from the coalition, which goes into effect on Tuesday morning. Due to the move, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu will retake his former seat in the Knesset, forcing the resignation of Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot, who held a lower spot on the two parties’ joint electoral list in the 2022 legislative election.

Smotrich’s decision allows Religious Zionism to regain the seat it loses with Sukkot’s ouster and, in turn, push out Otzma Yehudit MK Yitzhak Kroizer.

“I will return and I will spend many more hours here in this building now,” Smotrich says. He praises Sukkot as “an amazing, hardworking, professional, with a fantastic learning ability” and calls him a “full friend and partner.”

Sukkot, he continues, “is not going anywhere” and “will continue to work with us” even if he is not an MK.

“I am returning to the Knesset with joy. I was in this house for eight years. I know its corridors, I know its rules, I know its dynamics. I really enjoyed being in the Knesset, so I have to work harder now to be both the finance minister and [a minister in the Defense Ministry] and in the Knesset.”