After the primaries: Likud will do everything so that Smotrich does not run alone | Commentary

This evening, the Religious Zionism party completed the selection of its list for the 26th Knesset, but the question remains: will Bezalel Smotrich run alone at all? The assessment on the right is that he will not: Benjamin Netanyahu will force a merger, as he will not want another party to his right, and the "independent list project" of Religious Zionism will end long before election day — at the negotiating table, not at the ballot box.

The assessment in Likud is that the Prime Minister will not use all of his reserved seat powers to inject new blood into the party, but will keep some of them as "technical reservations" — that is, reserving realistic spots for representatives of external bodies to be added to the Likud list. This is exactly the move we saw in 2021, when Ofir Sofer — today, ironically, one of the two defectors who refrained from voting tonight in the Religious Zionism primaries — was placed on the Likud list as a technical reservation before returning to Religious Zionism after the elections.

In other words: the same tool that Benjamin Netanyahu used to add a right-wing figure to his list five years ago may be used by him now to swallow parts of the right-wing around him — Religious Zionism among them.

However, this time the price will be much higher, and the player who will determine it is Itamar Ben Gvir. If in 2022 Itamar Ben Gvir was satisfied with the "zipper" technique and a comfortable merger with Religious Zionism, this time — with increased electoral power, a ministerial position in the government, and an established public status — he is expected to demand much more: the head of the joint list, and a significant number of spots that will reflect his new strength.

From his perspective, this is a completely logical demand. At the same time, Benjamin Netanyahu will have to deal with a series of marginal elements on the right who will also seek to integrate — starting from Avi Maoz, who is already threatening to run independently, which could "burn" an entire mandate, and ending with figures like Moshe Feiglin and Michael Ben-Ari.

To reconcile all these antagonists and prevent the scattering of votes on the right, it is likely that Benjamin Netanyahu will have to sacrifice a reservation or two of his own within Likud. Reservations that were ostensibly intended to strengthen Likud will become bargaining chips in a large right-wing merger deal that Benjamin Netanyahu will try to promote.