Haaretz journalist Yossi Verter on Friday morning wrote that a "complete veto" from the "house in Caesarea" is preventing MK Benjamin Netanyahu from helping Ayelet Shaked's Jewish Home party pass the electoral threshold.
"If Netanyahu would say outright, or even by means of an emissary or representative, that those who define themselves 'Religious Zionists' who are not able to vote for the Likud or Religious Zionism (and there are more than a few like this) are invited to vote for the Jewish Home, and if he would add that Shaked will be a desired part of his government, she would, today, have a not unlikely chance of four Knesset seats, and he would cross the 61-seat mark," Verter wrote.
"The electoral potential is there," he emphasized. "The complete veto from the house in Caesarea, which is authoritative, [and] the eternal boycott of our Mrs. Sara, is also there. And in the meantime it overpowers all other rational reasoning."
Earlier this week, Shaked told those close to her, "I know that if Netanyahu will say a sentence, two sentences, the right sentences, I will pass the electoral threshold and he will easily reach 62, maybe 63 [seats]. I know that he wants this, that he understands. But she isn't letting him."
According to Verter, Shaked now has the equivalent of approximately two Knesset seats.
"National Unity has identified, in recent surveys, between half and three-quarters of a Knesset seat, around 20,000 voters, who right now support the Jewish Home but who on November 1 will not vote for them, if they believe their votes will go to waste," he said.
"These people," National Unity's Matan Kahana said this week, "can be brought to us. They are religious moderates, who do not even think of voting for Netanyahu or [MK Itamar] Ben-Gvir (Religious Zionism). They love what I did in the Religious Affairs Ministry."