Netanyahu orchestrates merger between far-right Israeli parties

Just before the start of the Sabbath, in the early evening of Friday, Aug. 26, an agreement was signed merging the tickets of two radical right-wing parties ahead of Israel’s Nov. 1 elections.

The deal between the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party led by Knesset member Itamar Ben-Gvir and Religious Zionism party head Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich was mediated by opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was signed using WhatsApp and no photo of the event was made available, for good reason. Although the deal provides Netanyahu with an electoral safety net by ensuring both parties are elected to the Knesset, bolstering his prospects of a Knesset majority, it hands his opponents an advantage by tainting him as a sponsor of the radical, racist right.

Evidently, Netanyahu is willing to take that risk because he has little choice if he wants the 61 Knesset seats that will send him back to the Prime Minister’s Office. Given the declared refusal of his left-wing and centrist opponents to join a future government with him at the helm, he was forced to maximize the full potential of the right-wing constituencies of these two parties and of the two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ).

The joint party run by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich provides Netanyahu with another advantage: It leaves him free to poach voters from their parties in order to beef up his own Likud, which has been losing ground in the polls, while still maximizing the political potential of the right wing. In other words, the merger between Religious Zionism and Jewish Power should yield (according to polls) well beyond the Knesset threshold of four seats. Thus, no votes are lost. Netanyahu, for his part, could nag away at their electorate without fearing that they won’t enter the Knesset.