The National Religious Party presented its list for the July 23 elections to the Central Elections Committee just before the midnight deadline tonight, averting a crisis that threatened to split the party’s already diminished Knesset faction.
The list represented a last minute compromise between Interior Minister Yosef Burg who heads the NRP’s Lamifne faction and Education Minister Zevulun Hammer, leader of its “young guard.” Burg, the senior party leader, tops the list, followed by Hammer, Prof. Avner Sciaki of Tel Aviv University and David Danino, co-chairman of the NRP’s organization department, in that order.
They are considered fairly certain of election unless the NRP’s Knesset representation which was reduced by half in the 1981 elections, suffers further losses in the July voting.
The religious party was threatened by a split earlier this week when Hammer and former Deputy Foreign Minister Yehuda Ben-Meir announced they were quitting the NRP to form a new faction, “Gesher”, which would stand for election on its own. The two men had the approval of the Knesset House Committee and would have qualified for election campaign subsidies from the government.
Israel’s other religious party, the Aguda Israel, also reached a last minute agreement on its election list after weeks of wrangling. Veteran Avraham Shapiro will head the Aguda list, followed by Menachem Porush, Shimon Siroka and Shmuel Halpert. Another veteran, Shlomo Lorincz, who has been an Aguda MK for 33 years, announced he would retire.
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