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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party holds a primary election among party members on Monday to select most of its candidate slate for Israel's Oct. 27 Knesset elections—and many of the prime minister's staunchest allies are at risk of losing their seats.
Parliament announced Sunday that Israel will hold a general election on Oct. 27, setting up a high-stakes contest in which Netanyahu will seek to extend his grip on power against a field of experienced and, in some cases, personally scarred challengers.
His most critical target is Knesset member Tally Gotliv, whom he considers an electoral disaster for Likud. He has pressed to add moderate faces to the list while sidelining the hardliners.
Party members say Monday’s vote will determine whether Likud shifts toward the extreme or the center.
Many within the party consider the primary as one of Likud’s most crucial in the past several years, particularly since roughly half of its current members of parliament are expected to be left out of the next Knesset.
According to Michael Hauser Tov of Haaretz, an Israeli media outlet, Netanyahu spent weeks as party leader doing everything he could to scrap the primary and assemble the Likud slate himself.
His aim was clear: pushing extremist figures out of the top of the slate and possibly off it altogether.
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