Likud to Decide Whether to Keep Primaries or Shift to a Handpicked List

Likud is heading to a decisive meeting on Wednesday, unless the schedule changes again, to determine the party’s future and, above all, whether it will cancel primaries and move to a committee-selected slate. The meeting was originally set for last Friday but was postponed because of developments in Lebanon. Party figures are pressing for a quick decision, and many inside Likud are angry about the delay, which they say is shaping their political future.

Expected to attend are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, party secretary Haim Katz, and other party institution representatives. The option of scrapping primaries is said to be fading because of legal and internal party obstacles. At the same time, Netanyahu is expected to intensify pressure for, if primaries are held, he receives the 10 reserved spots he is demanding, as previously reported by Walla.

According to Netanyahu, two of those 10 spots are not for him personally. One is tied to his agreement with Gideon Sa’ar, and another is meant to keep room for a possible future joint arrangement involving Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, similar to what happened earlier with Ofir Sofer and Eli Ben Dahan. In private conversations, Netanyahu says there is broad agreement in Likud that the list needs renewal, and that only a small number of reservations would be swallowed by the list without creating the substantial change he wants.

He argues there is no single candidate who can bring in voters on his own, so the party needs a large number of new contenders to refresh its public image. Meanwhile, Netivot Mayor Yechiel Zohar came out against ending primaries, telling Walla that primaries are “the beating heart of the Likud movement” and the only mechanism that ensures proper representation for districts, women, the periphery, and entire sectors that see Likud as their political home. He warned that canceling the vote would badly damage grassroots activists’ motivation, though he said he supports specific reservations in the list, but only as a supplement, not a replacement, for primaries.