RZP secured six seats and 225,000 votes in the election, giving it small but significant representation, and huge leverage in the event that some form of right-wing, religious government could be put together.
The party’s agenda is very clear and it publicized a detailed party manifesto laying out its policy goals on a range of matters, including reducing the power of the High Court, settlements, and religion and state matters.
The party has been reluctant however, like many of the other parties ahead of the elections, to detail what ministerial portfolios it would seek.
Given the final election results in which the right-wing religious bloc secured 59 seats in the Knesset, two less than needed for a majority, RZP leaders and officials have been even more reluctant to discuss the issue.
However, party leader Bezalel Smotrich said clearly back in February in an interview on 103 Radio that his most coveted position is in fact chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.
He said that for the first hundred days of a government he was part of he would use the chairmanship of the committee to help steer legislation through the Knesset to pass a law giving the Knesset the ability to override the High Court in the event it strikes down legislation.
RZP in particular and much of the Israeli right-wing more broadly has fulminated for many years against the intervention of the High Court on the issue of settlement construction on private Palestinian land, laws to detain African asylum seekers and migrants, and other issues where it believes the court does not have a mandate to intervene,
Both Smotrich and Ben Gvir have frequently denounced the High Court for it many of its decisions, most recently the ruling banning the government from preventing citizens to return to Israel and the decision recognizing the right of Reform and Conservative converts in Israel to be granted citizenship under the Law of Return.
Smotrich also said he would also use the committee to change the process in which judges are selected and to split the position of attorney general into two: a chief legal adviser and a chief prosecutor.
The Jerusalem Post understands that ultimately Smotrich would like to be appointed justice minister, although it would be difficult to obtain such a powerful ministry with just six seats.
Ben Gvir for his part has in the past expressed interest in serving on the Committee for Selecting Judges, as part of his desire to change what he and his party perceive to be the left-wing, liberal control of the justice system.
Asked on Wednesday night in an interview with Channel 12 however what position he would like should he be part of a government, Ben Gvir said he would like to be minister for security in the Negev and Galilee, although no such ministry currently exists.
The Negev and Galilee have large Arab populations, and Ben Gvir and Otzmah Yehudit are notoriously hostile to Israel’s Arab citizens.
A clause in Otzmah Yehudit’s own party manifesto states that the party “will work to remove the enemies of Israel from our country,” while another clause Otzmah’s talks of “encouraging” Arab emigration from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
Otzma member Baruch Marzel, who was disqualified from running for the Knesset by the High Court for racism, said in a 2019 interview that he believed “the majority” of Arab citizens of Israel are enemies, “but not all of them, I’m not including 100 percent.”
In his Channel 12 interview, Ben Gvir said that “Jews there [in the Negev and Galilee] are groaning,” and that “women are being harassed and call the police and there is no police, it’s terrible.”
The Noam party, which united with Otzma before the unity deal with Smotrich, is mostly focused on its agenda against the LGBT community and policies granting them more rights.
The spiritual leader of the party Rabbi Tzvi Tau, one of the most conservative leaders of the hardline wing of the religious-Zionist movement, has himself called for a strong battle against equality policies for the LGBT community.
In comments exposed by Channel 12 on Wednesday night, Tau was heard stating that “these homosexuals, these sexual deviants, are wretched people.”
He also alleged that LGBT activists have “penetrated the Education Ministry into the youngest classes where the children have no idea at all, and insert post-modern values - values, post-modern poison.”
It is unclear what kind of position Noam representative Avi Maoz would seek, although a seat on the Knesset Education Committee would not be a surprise given the strong concerns of Tau and others regarding education on sexual inclination and the family unit.