PM Binyamin Netanyahu faces steep opposition after being booed by his own party members at last year’s convention.
The Likud’s election committee worked out a compromise between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his party rivals on Wednesday regarding how to handle elections for the leadership of the party’s institutions.
The elections are seen as a key bellwether of how strong Netanyahu is in the party, and they are expected to have a big impact on the Likud’s future. The prime minister has been pushing off holding the elections for more than a year.
But after the Tel Aviv District Court ruled that the elections must be held by June 30, Netanyahu and his opponents decided to hold the races on that last possible day.
There apparently will not be a Likud convention with speeches, after Netanyahu was booed at the last convention, in May 2012.
Netanyahu and his rivals continue to disagree on procedural matters that will have an impact on who runs in the elections. Candidates will have until next Tuesday to join the race.
Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon is considered the leading candidate for chairman of the powerful Likud central committee. He will be challenged by party activist Michael Fuah, who is close to MK Moshe Feiglin.
Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin and MK Tzipi Hotovely will vie for the chairmanship of the party’s ideological bureau. Transportation Minister Israel Katz is expected to keep his job as head of the Likud secretariat that oversees the party’s finances, though MK Miri Regev might run against him.
The most powerful post that will be elected is chairman of the Likud’s internal court.
Netanyahu had supported retired judge Nissim Yeshaya for the job, but he dropped out of the race after he was scolded for saying that “some women enjoy rape.”
Netanyahu hopes to bring in a new candidate, but the court hinted that it could be legally problematic.
The prime minister is concerned that if a right-wing Likud activist is elected to the job, the courts will be used against him.
Commentary on an event that will not take place for another 17 days, is difficult and probably unproductive. Despite that, it is now obvious that key players in the Likud leadership, especially among the powerful Jewish nationalist bloc, are organizing for what appears to be efforts to shrink Netanyahu’s future ability to sell out Jewish control over Shomron and Yehuda in some squalid deal — hidden or otherwise — with the US Secretary of State in his perpetually-moribund efforts to extract a promise, vague or otherwise, on behalf of creating an independent Arab state west of the Jordan River.
If and when Netanyahu is stripped of his power within his own party, that does not at all imply a breakup of the Likud. I think that such a house-cleaning by the Jewish national elements of their party leadership would in fact help boost overall support for the Likud in any upcoming national elections.
Bringing Lapid’s party into the governing coalition is proving to be a bad idea, now that Lapid has spoken at length in favor of abandoning the Jewish population of Shomron and Yehuda. The next governing coalition led by the Likud should include only Knesset blocs that support Jewish nationalism. Any centrists invited into such a governing coalition must pass a litmus test of support for Jewish annexation and Jewish repopulating over all parts of the historic lands of Eretz-Yisrael from the Nile to the Euphrates as any such segments of those lands come under control of the modern Jewish state.
But once again, it must be stressed that none of this can or shall occur as long as untrustworthy personalities such as Netanyahu can influence the well-being and possibly the destinies of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI