On the night of Jan. 15, moments before the deadline to submit candidate lists for the 23rd Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded in forcing the three parties on the right – HaBayit HaYehudi, the New Right, and the National Union – to merge and form a single list that will support him through hell and high water. He managed it even though none of the parties wanted to take part in their own “shotgun wedding.” After all, they had run as a bloc, Yamina, in the September 2019 elections only to end their partnership as soon as the disappointing results came in.
To create the new Yamina, HaBayit HaYehudi reneged on an earlier accord with the far-right Otzma Yehudit. Though HaBayit HaYehudi Chairman Rabbi Rafi Peretz is hardly an experienced politician, he was well aware of the political significance of violating the agreement he had signed with Otzma Yehudit.
Meanwhile, Naftali Bennett may have wanted to distinguish himself from the hard right, but in the end, he succumbed to Netanyahu’s pressure, like he always does. What Bennett really wanted was to form a new list with his secular partner, Ayelet Shaked, that would appeal to religious and secular voters on the right without being tied hand and foot to the religious Zionist movement or subjected to the rulings of its rabbis. By joining the same list as Peretz and National Union leader Bezalel Smotrich, he is doing the exact opposite of what he had originally intended.
It is true that all the senior partners of the Yamina list are ardent supporters of annexing the occupied territories. Furthermore, they all consider their battle with the Supreme Court to be a holy war that will eventually allow them to advance their ideology on the Greater Land of Israel. The problem is Smotrich and Peretz. Given their benighted worldviews, they cannot help Bennett recruit new supporters. Not only does this make Bennett hard pressed to steal seats from the soft right, he will also have a hard time suppressing Netanyahu’s craving to steal votes from him and Yamina to increase the size and strength of the Likud.
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