Far-right leader Ben-Gvir calls for unity with religious-Zionist parties
This electoral weakness means that all three parties will be looking to unite with other factions.
By YONAH JEREMY BOBItamar Ben-Gvir from the Otzma Yehudit party, attends a hearing at Israel's Supreme Court in Jerusalem March 13, 2019(photo credit: AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS)
Itamar Ben-Gvir, a leading figure in the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, called on ministers Rabbi Rafi Peretz and Bezalel Smotrich to form a united party to run in the upcoming election.Otzma ran on a joint list with Peretz’s Bayit Yehudi and Smotrich’s National Union in the April election, but the latter two ditched Ben-Gvir’s outfit for the September election and united with Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett’s New Right party instead.Otzma took just 83,000 votes in the September election, while a joint list of Bayit Yehudi and National Union is consistently polling either under the electoral threshold of 3.25%, or barely above it. This electoral weakness means that all three parties will be looking to unite with other factions.Speaking on Galei Yisrael on Sunday morning, Ben-Gvir called on Peretz and Smotrich to get together with him and formulate a plan for a united list of all three parties as soon as possible.“I call on Rabbi Rafi Peretz and on Bezalel Smotrich and say it’s enough with the games,” Ben-Gvir said. “We can right now go into a room in the morning, and leave at night with an agreement [for a united electoral list] or with a primaries model.”Ben-Gvir argued that since the United Right party of Bayit Yehudi, National Union and Otzma received a collective 159,000 votes in the April election, and Otzma by itself took 84,000 in the September election, it should make Otzma the strongest partner in any unity deal. He added that Otzma would not make demands to lead the list or get the first ministerial role, but simply to have a fair deal where “we win and they win.”Speaking on Saturday night, Smotrich implied that he was more interested in a repeat of the unity deal between Bayit Yehudit, National Union and New Right. He said that he had “always opposed the divide in the religious-Zionist community,” asserting that it was the splitting off of New Right from Bayit Yehudi in the April election that led to “the chaos we have today,” and did not even mention Otzma.“If New Right had not left Bayit Yehudi and we would have run as one party, we would be almost a year into a right-wing government right now,” Smotrich said on Saturday night on Channel 12’s Meet the Press program. “The religious-Zionist movement must not split up, it must run together as one [party], it needs to be big, strong and dominant.”
