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Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionism party announces the candidates who will compete for a spot on the party’s Knesset slate, pitting veteran lawmakers against a handful of new faces.
Voting in the primary is limited to those in the party’s central committee rather than its full member rolls, and will not include a race for party leader, which will remain in Smotrich’s hands. He also controls the placement of two hand-picked candidates for the party’s top 10 spots.
Incumbent candidates include Settlements Minister Orit Strock and MKs Michal Woldiger, Ohad Tal, Simcha Rothman and Zvi Sukkot. Also seeking slots are Omer Rahamim, who heads the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization representing West Bank settlements, Rosh Haayin Deputy Mayor Eitan Tam, Petah Tikva Deputy Mayor Tzvika Weizengrad, Rabbi Shmuel Sasson, and Natan Zaubman, who heads a program for the absorption of French immigrants.
Smotrich is expected to use one of his reserved slots for Tzvika Mor, the father of former hostage Eitan Mor, who joined the party in May.
After his son was kidnapped, Mor co-founded the Tikva Forum, a small group of hostages’ families who, unlike members of the larger Hostages and Missing Families Forum, consistently opposed partial hostage release agreements with Hamas that involved the release of Palestinian security prisoners and temporary ceasefires in Gaza.
Two of the party’s incumbent lawmakers, Immigration and Absorption Minister Ofir Sofer and MK Moshe Solomon, announced last week that they would not seek reelection over the faction’s decision to support a series of laws enshrining Haredi non-enlistment to the IDF.
Smotrich previously removed Solomon from all Knesset committees for breaking coalition discipline and voting against a quasi-constitutional government bill equating Torah study with military service.
Polls project the party to win just four or five seats, or fail to cross the threshold altogether, unless it mounts a joint campaign with fellow far-right party Otzma Yehudit, which it did in the 2022 election.
The post Religious Zionism announces candidates for party’s primary appeared first on The Times of Israel.
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