Politics & Diplomacy
Likud members crowned Eli Cohen and sent Netanyahu's loyalists home
Image credit: Eli Cohen — Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) · License
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Likud voted on Monday for the list it will carry into the 27 October election, and by Tuesday the party knew which of its ministers will not be in the next Knesset.
Energy Minister Eli Cohen took the first slot decided by the members, placing him second on the ballot behind Benjamin Netanyahu. Behind him came Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Transport Minister Miri Regev and coalition whip Ofir Katz.
Likud said 76,068 members voted, a turnout of about 53 percent, down from 58 percent at the last primary in 2022. Netanyahu called himself very satisfied with the result and predicted a big victory in October.
76,068
Likud members who voted — a turnout of roughly 53 percent, the party's own figure
The arithmetic that decides who goes home#
The list is not the primary alone. Netanyahu controls eight reserved slots he fills himself, and the Times of Israel reported that five have gone to Gideon Sa'ar, Defence Minister Israel Katz, Haim Katz and the newcomer Oren Dobronsky, with the rest still open.
Those reservations reorder everything below them. Tally Gotliv finished twelfth in the members' vote and lands at twenty on the ballot; Boaz Bismuth finished fifteenth and lands at twenty-three. Hanoch Milwidsky, Nissim Vaturi and Social Equality Minister May Golan were all pushed down.
The reordering matters because the polls have not moved. Surveys through August have put Likud at 22 to 24 seats against the 32 it holds now, which means about a third of the party's sitting members are competing for places that will not exist after the count.
Two readings of the same ballot#
The Israeli papers drew opposite conclusions from the same numbers, and both are worth a Palestinian reader's attention.
Haaretz read the result as a strengthening of Likud's far right, reporting that the Kahanist wing tightened its grip on the ballot while Netanyahu's internal opponents survived the purge he had hoped for.
The Times of Israel read it the other way. The pollster Nimrod Nir told the paper that the members themselves favoured hardliners — Gotliv and Bismuth would have sat in the top three on an unfiltered count — and that Netanyahu's reserved slots were the instrument that pulled the visible list back toward the moderate right and the swing voters Likud has been shedding.
Both readings describe the same machine. The membership pushes one way, the leader's eight slots push the other, and what the voter sees in October is the second result rather than the first.
What the list means from here#
The names at the top are not new to Palestinians. Levin drove the judicial overhaul that consumed Israeli politics before the war; Regev and Ohana have been among the government's loudest voices; Israel Katz, now guaranteed a top-five place, is the defence minister who ordered the army to hand settler policing to the Israeli police during the Qusra siege.
The list also sets the terms of the coalition arithmetic. A Likud in the low twenties cannot build a government without Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, whose price is annexation and settlement expansion.
The bloc arrayed against it cannot reach 61 without the seats of the Arab lists led by Mansour Abbas and by Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi — seats both sides need and neither side wants to be seen taking.
That is the paradox facing Palestinian citizens of Israel again this autumn, and Monday's ballot moved it no closer to resolution. It settled only who inside Likud will be present to argue.
