Among the 4 far right parties in Israel, looks like "New Ri…

Jewish Home (very religious, mildly hawkish), Religious Zionist Party (very religious, very hawkish), and Otzma Yehudit/Jewish Power (theocratic, genocidal) will run together and be pro-Bibi

The "Religious Zionist Party" used to be called "Tkuma", it was the religious faction of a hawkish, mostly secular coalition called the "National Union". It's legally taken over the National Union's spot in the election registry but jettisoned most of it's secular voters

"Jewish Home" used to be called the "National Religious Party" for most of it's history. It renamed itself in order to gain secular votes but most of those new people left to form "New Right" so now "Jewish Home" is smaller than the old "National Religious Party"

In the last election, New Right, Religious Zionist Party (then called Tkuma-The National Union), and the Jewish Home all ran together as pro-Bibi with Otzma Yehudit running on its own and failing to enter parliament

"New Right" appears to be cozying up to "New Hope" the new anti-Bibi center-right party. So Bibi has probably encouraged the 2 smaller parties to break away and team up with the far far right party

"Religious Zionist Party" and "Jewish Home" couldn't get into parliament by themselves or even in alliance with each other. Otzma Yehudit couldn't get into parliament by themselves either. All 3 together will probably get into parliament

So Bibi will go into this election with the basically guaranteed support of his own party, the two ultra Orthodox parties ("Shas" and "United Torah Judaism") and whatever the 3 party far-right alliance ends up calling itself

Not enough for a majority but probably enough to deny New Hope a majority (assuming New Hope doesn't want to bring in the far left and the Arabs, which they do not want to)

Bibi's hope is that parties who are in the bag for him will win more seats than parties that are in the bag for New Hope. That might hypothetically make "New Right" switch back to Bibi

So Bibi's preferred coalition is:

His own party + parties loyal to him + New Right (which used to be loyal to him) (+ maybe the Islamist Arab party "United Arab List")

The media seems to think New Hope is angling for a broad anti-Bibi coalition including the far left Meretz party. I do not believe this, I do not think it would work. I think they probably want to make the ultra-Orthodox parties switch sides and bring on one bland centrist party

I'll do a separate thread on centrist and center-left parties later. They're much more complicated

Among the 4 far right parties in Israel, looks like "New Right" (mildly religious, very hawkish) will run alone and be anti-Bibi

More from World

You May Also Like