Israeli parties submit candidate lists as Eisenkot rules out merger with Bennett’s alliance

Israeli political parties submitted candidate lists to the Central Elections Committee on Monday amid divisions among alliances, with Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot ruling out a merger with the Together alliance led by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Ofer Winter opting to run independently with his People of Israel party. The move came ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for registering candidates. Eisenkot, a former Israeli army chief of staff, submitted a list of 40 candidates for his party, which opinion polls project to become the largest in the upcoming elections. He thus confirmed that he will contest the election on a separate list rather than merge with the Together alliance, which also includes candidates from Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party. The alliance also formally submitted its list to the Central Elections Committee. While the decision by Together and Yashar to contest the election on separate lists was expected, Winter’s decision to submit an independent list rather than run with the Religious Zionism Party came as a surprise within Israel’s right-wing camp. Ofer Winter submitted the list of his People of Israel party for the 26th Knesset, without any alliance, Israel’s public broadcaster KAN reported. “We regret Ofer Winter’s decision to run independently,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who chairs the far-right Religious Zionism party, said in a post on the US social media platform X. "The only beneficiaries of Winter’s refusal to join the national camp are (Attorney General) Gali Baharav-Miara and (Supreme Court President) Isaac Amit and their allies on the left," he said. Describing Winter's decision as “disappointing,” Smotrich said the move "casts serious doubt on the credibility of his pledge" to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the premiership and to "align exclusively with the national camp." As of Monday evening, several parties had yet to submit their lists, including Netanyahu’s Likud and Smotrich's Religious Zionism parties as well as the Arab parties. The general election will be held on Oct. 27 amid a close contest between Netanyahu’s camp and the opposition camp. Opinion polls indicate that neither camp will be able to form a government on its own. Forming a government in Israel requires the confidence of at least 61 of the 120 members of the Knesset. KAN reported late Sunday that a poll showed Netanyahu’s camp winning 52 seats compared with 51 for Eisenkot’s camp, down from 55 seats in the previous poll. It added that with the four seats the poll awarded to the Hendel-Zelekha alliance, Netanyahu’s camp would rise to 56 seats, leaving it five seats short of the required majority. According to the outlet, Eisenkot's bloc would reach 55 seats and would need the support of the Joint List, a political alliance of Arab-majority political parties, to surpass the 61-seat threshold. The poll indicates that Arab members of the Knesset would win 13 seats, while most leaders of Jewish opposition parties refuse to accept the support of Arab Knesset members to form a government.