Over the past few days, more than a few leading activists and heads of local branches of the Likud Party received personal phone calls from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He was contacting them to make sure that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon ranks high in the list of Likud candidates for the 20th Knesset.

In the Likud of just a decade ago, Ya’alon, a former chief of staff and a respected defense minister, who made the transition from the Mapai-style left (today's Labor Party) to the embrace of the right, would certainly have been elected to a high spot on the party list without any help. But this is the 2014 model of the Likud, which has been taken over by powerful right-wing groups and settlers. In this Likud, Ya’alon could well find himself appearing on the list after such darlings of the settlers as Knesset members Miri Regev, Danny Danon and Zeev Elkin.

In some warped way, Ya’alon is practically a target for elimination by the extreme right, which claims that he did not stand beside them and that, as defense minister, he did not push hard enough to advance construction in the settlements. Apparently, Ya’alon will also pay a steep price for failing to pay enough visits to the local Likud branches and for frequently canceling his attendance at political events and the personal celebrations of key Likud figures, just because he was forced to deal with pressing security issues. The defense minister will certainly be elected to the Likud’s list for the next Knesset, which will be chosen on the night of Dec. 31. But this is really a battle of prestige. It is a fight over the public face of the ruling party, a party that has raised a white flag of surrender to a right-wing takeover.

Netanyahu’s urgent phone calls on the day preceding the primaries have become a repetitive and tired ritual since the last elections. Netanyahu always dives in at the very last minute to prevent the list from becoming radicalized. Still, the Likud has become increasingly extreme from one election to the next, losing those features that once made it the party of the people.