Settlements Minister Strock wins 2nd spot after Smotrich in Religious Zionism primary

Voting limited to far-right party’s central committee rather than full membership; hostage father Tzvika Mor set to be given 3rd spot on Knesset slate, one of two reserved for Smotrich’s picks

The Religious Zionism party held its primary election Sunday, with incumbent lawmakers largely filling the only realistic spots on the far-right party’s Knesset slate, beginning with Settlements Minister Orit Strock.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was reelected party leader in a vote by the central committee last year and did not participate in Sunday’s ballot.

Strock was followed by MKs Simcha Rothman, Zvi Sukkot, Ohad Tal, and newcomer Omer Rahamim, who heads the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization representing West Bank settlements, supplanting incumbent lawmaker Michal Woldiger, who fell to seventh place.

Strock and Smotrich have overseen the government’s settlement expansion agenda, a flagship issue for the party, which draws much of its support from the religious Zionist community in West Bank settlements. During its tenure, the current government has approved 103 new West Bank settlements, an unprecedented number in the history of the settlement movement.

Also elected were newcomers Rabbi Shmuel Sasson, Petah Tikva Deputy Mayor Tzvika Weizengrad, Rosh Haayin Deputy Mayor Eitan Tam, and Natan Zaubman, who heads a program assisting French immigrants to Israel.

The list is not yet final, however, as Smotrich is entitled to reserve at least two places on the slate for his handpicked candidates — one in each group of five candidates — and is expected to use one of those slots for Tzvika Mor.

Mor, the father of former hostage Eitan Mor, joined the party in May and co-founded the Tikva Forum, a small group of hostages’ families who, unlike members of the larger Hostages and Missing Families Forum, consistently opposed partial hostage release agreements with Hamas that involved the freeing of Palestinian security prisoners and temporary ceasefires in Gaza.

Religious Zionism technically holds seven Knesset seats, but is currently represented by eight politicians, including Smotrich, who resigned his parliamentary seat under the so-called Norwegian Law upon joining the cabinet in 2023 and was replaced in the Knesset by Sukkot.

Recent polls project the party winning only four or five seats, or failing to cross the threshold altogether, unless it mounts a joint campaign with fellow far-right party Otzma Yehudit, which it did in the 2022 election.

Despite the bleak polling, Smotrich predicted on Sunday that his party will win 10 seats in the October 27 election.

While briefly hailing the primary results, he devoted most of his remarks to warning that “the right and the national camp are in a slumber reminiscent of the 1992 election on the eve of the accursed Oslo Accords,” adding that if Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main rival, is elected, the country will “wake up the day after the election with a dangerous left-wing government backed by the Arab parties.”

“[Eisenkot] will destroy everything we have built in Judea and Samaria and, together with his left-wing partners, return to the Oslo path of establishing a Palestinian state,” he said.

Smotrich pledged to continue to shore up “the pioneering settlers and the heroic farm outposts,” and to “cancel the Oslo Accords and abolish the division of the Land of Israel into Areas A, B, and C.”

Settler violence has surged in the West Bank in recent months, with near-daily attacks, though arrests and indictments for the violence are rare. Critics have accused the government of condoning the attacks and doing too little to stop them.

Alongside the outposts, there are also 126 settlement farms, which are also illegal under Israeli law, but have been established with near-full support from the government.

Two of the party’s incumbent lawmakers, Immigration and Absorption Minister Ofir Sofer and MK Moshe Solomon, announced last week that they would not seek reelection over the faction’s decision to support a series of laws enshrining Haredi non-enlistment to the IDF.

Smotrich had previously removed Solomon from all Knesset committees for breaking coalition discipline and voting against a quasi-constitutional government bill that would equate Torah study with military service.

The party is one of only a handful to use an internal primary to select its Knesset slate, but unlike The Democrats party, which held primaries last week, only members of the Religious Zionism central committee participated in the vote.

While Likud also elects most of its candidates through a primary open to all members, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will handpick eight candidates on the party’s list under rules approved this week. Meanwhile, the Arab-majority Hadash party selected its candidates through a vote of party delegates rather than the full membership in May.