For the moment, it is still unclear what will happen with the experimental balloon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu floated Sept. 16 regarding lowering the electoral threshold, which stands at 3.25% of the votes today. “I’m raising the possibility of lowering the electoral threshold by half a percent … but this must be with everyone’s agreement,” Netanyahu said seemingly offhand to his senior partners in the coalition — the leaders of the right-wing parties and the ultra-Orthodox.

In fact, there was nothing innocent or offhand in this statement, which made some of his partners sweat, each for his own personal electoral reasons. They, like Netanyahu, are examining the initiative with an instrumentalist outlook.

Chairman of HaBayit HaYehdi and Minister of Education Naftali Bennett fears that lowering the electoral threshold will cause a split in his party and spur the most extreme element — member of the Knesset Bezalel Smotrich — to establish an independent party.

The same applies to Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri. He also can’t bear the thought that his bitter rival — former Shas Chairman Eli Yishai, who heads the rival independent party Yachad — would be elected to the next Knesset. (In the 2015 election, Yishai’s Yachad got almost 3% of the votes.) Deri’s opposition stands in spite of the possibility that lowering the electoral threshold would benefit him as well, since his situation in the polls is not stellar. The will to seek revenge on Yishai is probably what motivates him.