Rabbi Moshe Levinger, leader of the militant Gush Emunim settlers movement, announced Tuesday that he would run for Knesset in next month’s elections, throwing the fragmented extreme right wing of the Israeli political spectrum into further disarray.
Levinger made his announcement exactly one week before the filing deadline for the June 23 elections.
He said he would prefer to run as an independent faction in a joint Tehiya-Moledet list.
But if the two far-right parties are unable to join forces — as seems now to be the case–he would run alone, Levinger said.
His candidacy would be aimed primarily at members of the National Religious Party who are disaffected because its leadership has refused to renounce the Camp David accords or demand the immediate annexation of the West Bank in its election platform.
But Levinger’s entry into the Knesset race also caused consternation in Tehiya and Moledet, which regard themselves as avowedly mixed lists of secular and religious Jews dedicated to a “Greater Israel.”
As such, they planned to aim their campaign at disgruntled NRP voters and ideologically motivated settlers in the administered territories. Levinger would be an important asset to such a strategy.
But Tehiya, headed by Professor Yuval Ne’eman, a Tel Aviv University physicist, and Moledet, led by retired Israel Defense Force General Rehavam Ze’evi, have been unable to agree on a common platform.
TALKS BROKE DOWN OVER ‘TRANSFER’
Merger talks broke down over Moledet’s insistence on incorporating into the joint platform the principle of “transfer,” meaning the involuntary removal of all Palestinians from Israeli-controlled territory.
Levinger’s bombshell may prompt the parties to resume their talks.
Levinger, the founder of the Jewish township of Kiryat Arba, overlooking Hebron, served a brief jail sentence two years ago for the fatal shooting of an Arab merchant in Hebron.
The recently reformed election laws raised the threshold for a Knesset seat from 1 to 1.5 percent of the total vote, which is expected to be about 2.2 million this year.
That means a candidate must collect some-what less than 40,000 votes to become a member of Parliament.
Among other new lists that have been announced shortly before the May 19 filing deadline is a Women’s Party, headed by Ruth Reznick, a veteran advocate of women’s rights who runs a shelter for battered women in Herzliya.
Reznick was a member of the Citizens Rights Movement but failed to get a safe seat on its list after the CRM merged with Mapam and the Shinui movement to form the new Meretz bloc.
Meanwhile, Efraim Gur, a Labor defector, was guaranteed a seat in the next Knesset by the Likud Central Committee despite strong opposition from some party activists.
Gur, who was elected to Parliament on the Labor ticket four years ago but switched to Likud in 1990, when the unity coalition broke down, was given the 30th spot on the Likud slate, which is considered “safe” for the June 23 elections.
Gur, whom Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir also rewarded with a sub-Cabinet job, protested last week that the safe seat had been promised him without the Central Committee’s intervention.
But his fears of rejection were unfounded. Nearly 75 percent of Likud’s governing body went along with Shamir, who credited Gur’s defection with keeping the party in power.
Some party factions, notably those loyal to Foreign Minister David Levy, felt the safe spots should go to longtime Likud loyalists.
Levy supporters far down on the list were dropped another notch to make room for Gur.
(JTA correspondent Gil Sedan in Jerusalem contributed to this report.)
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