Israeli Press
Likud hands Tally Gotliv to Ben Gvir as polls tie the blocs
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Image credit: Itamar Ben Gvir, 2022 — Alon Nuriel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 · License
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Likud announced on Thursday evening that Tally Gotliv, one of its most combative lawmakers, will run on Itamar Ben Gvir's Otzma Yehudit list on 27 October without being declared a defector, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported. Until the election she remains bound by Likud's faction discipline.
Gotliv had finished twelfth in Likud's primary and slid to about twentieth once Benjamin Netanyahu filled the slots reserved for him, Haaretz's Yonatan Lis and Noa Shpigel wrote. She called the outcome a "targeted elimination" and said that if she failed to enter the Knesset she would find herself "in Shin Bet detention facilities," a line the paper carried without elaboration from her.
The poll behind the move#
The transfer lands on a night when the blocs are level. Maariv's pollster Menachem Lazar told the 103fm radio station on Thursday that a Channel 13 survey had produced a surprising tie, and that "everything rises and falls on one party": Ofer Winter's new right-wing list, which Channel 13 puts at four seats and Lazar's own poll left below the threshold.
Add Winter's four seats to the 49 Lazar gives Netanyahu's coalition and the two polls agree. The Times of Israel's summary of the same poll had the pro-Netanyahu bloc at 50 and the anti-Netanyahu bloc at 55, six short of a majority, with Likud and Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar "neck and neck."
Neither bloc reaches 61 without the Arab lists, which both refuse to count. That is the arithmetic in which Gotliv's seat matters: Likud loses nothing in bloc terms by moving her, and Otzma Yehudit gains a name.
The Palestinian stake#
Ben Gvir unveiled his "Disengagement 710" emigration plan for Gaza on the same day and said an Emigration Ministry would be his first coalition demand. Gotliv joins that list as its campaign takes shape.
Elazar Stern, who left Yesh Atid this week for Eisenkot's party, told Ynet that no Arab party currently meets his three conditions for partnership but asked why interviewers press him only on Ra'am: "You ask about Ra'am, Ra'am, Ra'am. And what about Eichler?", a reference to the ultra-Orthodox lawmaker who opposes military service. Both blocs are still counting seats they say they will not use.
