Netanyahu loyalists victorious in Israel party primaries
All those Likud seniors who might have fiddled with the idea of challenging the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu were pushed to unelectable spots on the party’s new Knesset list.
Eighty-thousand Likud members arrived yesterday at polling booths to choose the party’s next Knesset list. Attendance was so big that organizers had to prolong voting time by two more hours.
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu was contested by no one as party leader. Thus, his position was not up to vote. Still, the composition of the list became a “Battle of Titans” within the party, between Netanyahu’s loyalists and the associates of possible future contenders to Likud leadership.
That being said, final results published this afternoon proved unequivocally that Netanyahu remains the sole, unchallenged leader of the party, even after he lost the last election. More so, members of the Likud who tried to challenge Netanyahu’s grip on the party with the goal of succeeding him were all shunted to the back of the list.
These included former Minister Yisrael Katz, former Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein and former Jerusalem mayor Nir Barakat. They all ended up behind lesser-known Knesset members, including some backbenchers, in the final list.
