Likud is the first party to complete its primary, with the results out last Friday. Benjamin Netanyahu easily won the leadership again, beating Danny Danon and surprising nobody. Gilad Erdan came first in the Likud list, with other more-moderate Likud members in the top 10 such as Silvan Shalom, Moshe Yaalon and Tzachi Hanegbi.
Some of more right-wing Likud members did much worse, with Moshe Feiglin coming low down the list in an unrealistic position for the next Knesset. The only woman in Likud’s top ten is Miri Regev, who’s one of the more right-leaning Likud MKs, while Tzipi Hotovely came down low enough to be doubtful for re-election. A lot of commentators have noted the dearth of women on the Likud list.
Mr Netanyahu has the right to add a couple of appointees to the Likud list and there’s a rumour that he’s going to hold some sort of public vote to choose them. Perhaps this will be announced at tomorrow night’s big event; Likud is holding an event in Tel Aviv on Monday night which party spinners say will be very significant.
Of course, following his defeat in the primary, there are rumours that Moshe Feiglin is considering founding a new party. I doubt he actually will, though. There were similar rumours in past primaries.
Labour announced formally that Manuel Trajtenberg would be joining their list and would be the party’s first choice for Finance Minister. This was pretty widely expected. In another piece of Labour gossip, leader Issac Herzog admitted that he’d been having voice training.
An Israeli Minister, apparently Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, was alleged to be having secret meetings with Fatah’s Mohammed Dahlan, a rival of PA President Abbas. Everyone has denied this story on all sides, so it’s probably true.
A conference last weekend in Nazareth discussed a united list between the two Arab parties and the Arab/Jewish Hadash party. Former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg even popped up, on Shabbat, wearing a kippa and claiming that a merged list was so important that he was prepared to break Shabbat to advocate for it. No decision was taken, though.
Finally, many people were surprised by reports that Channel 2 journalist Tzion Nanous had joined Bayit Yehudi. The story was reported on several websites until it became clear what had happened – Nanous had been added to the party’s WhatsApp group as a reporter, and some party members interpreted the “Tzion Nanous has joined” message incorrectly. On Twitter, Naftali Bennett joked “That’s how it started for Yigal Manon too”, referring to another journalist who recently joined the party.