Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann has joined Opposition Leader Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party in asking the Attorney-General to decide how to deal with Likud members who joined Kadima in time for the latter's primaries.
Currently, some 3,500 people listed on the Kadima rolls joined the party while they were still in the Likud.
Israeli law states that one may not be a registered member of two different parties at the same time, and the penalty for this crime is up to a year in prison. The law is rarely enforced, however.
Before party primaries, candidates generally try to recruit new members to the party rolls, hoping to garner their votes in the election. This is sometimes done by gathering names en-masse, such as in workers' unions and municipal council employees - many of whom may already be signed up in other parties.
It is feared that the next Prime Minister - apparently either Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni or Transportation Minister Sha'ul Mofaz, the two front-runners in the upcoming Kadima primaries for party leader - will thus be determined by the votes of illegal members of Kadima.
Likud Expresses Concern
The Likud recently released a statement saying it "views with gravity" the phenomenon of double party membership, which it says "should be uprooted from the source."
However, Likud head Binyamin Netanyahu originally rebuffed a request by Kadima's Election Board head, retired Judge Dan Arbel, to submit a copy of the lists of Likud voters so that Kadima can compare them with its own and remove the double members. Netanyahu said it would violate the citizens' rights to privacy.
The Likud asked the Parties Registrar, "as a statutory body," to compare the parties' lists in order to find double members. However, the Registrar said he does not have the legal authority to do so, similarly citing privacy issues.
In view of the public interest the issue it has aroused, Netanyahu then asked Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to advise him on how to proceed. On Tuesday, Justice Minister Friedmann made a similar request to Mazuz, asking him to "consider the legal issues regarding double party registration."