Benjamin Netanyahu has failed in his efforts to either get the far-right Jewish Power party to run in a joint list with other right-wing parties or drop out of the election race altogether.
The party, known in Hebrew as Otzma Yehudit, received 84,000 votes in the September 2019 election — not enough to pass the electoral threshold of 3.25 per cent but potentially worth two seats for Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.
The prime minister’s electoral strategy is to try and eke out as many votes as possible from the right-wing base. To this purpose, he has been trying over three election campaigns for the past year to impose Jewish Power on the other religious parties.
In April 2019, it worked when they ran together with Jewish Home and National Union, but the new right-wing party led by Naftali Bennett ran on its own, failing to cross the threshold. Without them, Mr Netanyahu did not have his majority.
Last week, after months of pressure, Mr Netanyahu was forced to concede that there was no way Mr Bennett would agree to run in a list together with Jewish Power candidates, and instead he shifted tactics, successfully cajoling Mr Bennett’s New Right to run in one list with Jewish Home and National Union.
Once the candidate lists had been filed with the Central Election Commission, and just before the deadline on January 15, he moved his focus once again to Jewish Power in an effort to get them not to run and waste right-wing votes.
But on Monday evening, Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben Gvir announced that they would be runnning all the way.
People talk about the right-wing bloc, but no-one actually wants us,” he said. “They just want to use and throw us away. They want the Jewish Power votes but they don’t want Jewish Power.”
Mr Ben Gvir claimed that emissaries of the prime minister had offered him all manner of senior positions, including that of an ambassador or a minister, to induce him not to run.
Mr Netanyahu’s office denied this. Another proposal made by Likud was to push legislation in the next Knesset to lower the electoral threshold, helping Jewish Power to pass the threshold in future.
Three out of the four media polls have Jewish Power failing to cross the electoral threshold on March 2, and despite the party’s insistence it will run all the way, Mr Netanyahu will continue pressuring them in the hope that they will relent.
