Naftali Bennett
Naftali BennettReuters

Arutz Sheva has learned that the Jewish Home intends to hold primaries in the coming weeks and elect a party chairman.

Next Wednesday, the party's central committee is expected to choose seven people to the party's election committee, to supervise primaries that will be held in late December of early January.

A few months later, the party will select its list for the Knesset.

The Jewish Home constitution that was ratified two months ago gives the party chairman the power to personally select two out of every ten candidates in the party's Knesset list. In addition, the clause that allowed only religious or traditional Jews to be selected was cancelled.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Central Committee Chair MK Danny Danon decided Sunday that the Likud primaries will be held on January 6. On December 24, a vote will be held on changing the Likud constitution so that Netanyahu can personally select some of the candidates on the list.

Likud and the Jewish Home appear to both be maneuvering toward the possibility of early elections. The maneuvers could be seen as a warning to the more leftist parties in the coalition, Hatnua and Yesh Atid, that the nationalists are ready to break up the coalition and head for elections, in which both Hatnua and Yesh Atid are expected to decrease in size. Hatnua is projected by the latest polls to lose one or two seats from its current 6 MKs, and Yesh Atid can expect to be slashed from 19 to 9 seats.