The Zehut party will not run in next year’s Knesset election, party chairman and former Likud MK Moshe Feiglin announced Friday morning.
“Zehut will not run in the third election,” Feiglin said. Zehut “will share its vision outside of politics, and will return to run when Israeli society is ready for a change.”
Feiglin said that some on the Right had suggested Zehut join a broad coalition of right-leaning parties, aimed at forming a right-wing majority in the next Knesset.
“Such things are being said openly in the media, and it could be that some such possibility could arise. There has also been talk about a possible joint run within the Religious Zionist [camp].”
The Zehut party chairman played down the possibility of such a joint run, however.
“But today I understand that in such a position, which is bound by the old division of left and right, Zehut’s voice would not be heard.”
“Zehut must run by itself – it cannot join up with any other party, and if it cannot do so right now, it must wait, work as an ideas movement to create interest in its ideas and to build from scratch the right venue for its ideas.”
Zehut fell short of the 3.25% electoral threshold in the April 2019 election, receiving 2.74% of the vote, despite polls showing it clearing the threshold.
In the September election, Zehut signed a deal with the Likud to drop out of the race in exchange for a ministry in the next government, and the Likud adopting some of Zehut’s positions.
The move caused a rupture within Zehut, leading some members of the party to bolt.
Earlier this month, economist Gilad Alper, physics lecturer Rafael Minnes, and educator and school reform activist Libby Molad formally launched the New Liberal Party of Israel, which, like Zehut, advocates libertarian positions on social and economic issues.