Pushing to again delay municipal elections, Smotrich urges Netanyahu to get involved

Far-right Religious Zionism leader asks PM to convene meeting of coalition party chiefs to decide issue; vote was previously postponed by three months because of war

By Michael Horovitz

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19 December 2023, 3:44 pm

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Michael Horovitz is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel

Illustrative: A man casts his ballot at a voting station in Israel's municipal elections, October 30, 2018, in Jerusalem. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The Religious Zionism party on Tuesday called for a further month’s postponement of local elections, currently scheduled for January 30, because of Israel’s ongoing war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza. The far-right party is spearheading the call, which is also backed by one ultra-Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism, and, conditionally, by another, Shas.

The vote, originally set for October 31, was delayed by three months after Hamas-led terrorists rampaged through the south of the country on October 7 in a shock onslaught, killing over 1,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and taking some 240 captives to Gaza.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the head of Religious Zionism, on Tuesday called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to convene a meeting of coalition leaders to decide on the issue.

“Recently, I have been pleading above all else not to hold the local elections at the end of January. First, this is no time for politics. This is the time for unity. Second, elections that take place during fighting harm the [prospects of] reserve officers who are competing for office,” Smotrich wrote to the prime minister.

Smotrich said that while Shas and UTJ had made their views clear, the prime minister’s Likud party “unfortunately” had not. Religious Zionism is currently polling very poorly in surveys regarding future national elections, with a flash Channel 12 poll on Monday night predicting it could fail to return to the Knesset.

Smotrich also cited an Israel Hayom report Monday that said the military, for operational and logistical reasons, was unable to facilitate voting for soldiers amid the war. According to that report, Interior Ministry officials said 10,000 soldiers would be needed to serve on panels overseeing voting by troops, and that this would be a tremendous burden.

However, both the Interior Ministry and IDF, in a response to the report, said they were ready to hold the elections as currently scheduled.

File: Shas chair Aryeh Deri (right) speaks to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich at a vote on the “reasonableness” bill at the assembly hall of the Knesset, in Jerusalem, on July 24, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Shas said on Monday that its leader Aryeh Deri had told Religious Zionism it would support a postponement until February 27 provided this was backed by a majority on the Knesset’s Internal Affairs Committee, but acknowledged that police, the IDF, and election officials have officially stated “they are ready to hold the elections on January 30.”

UTJ said: “Our position is to delay the elections to the end of February.”