The threat of a split in the nascent Jewish Home party appears to have passed, but several MKs still demand primaries for party leader. In the meanwhile, a popular Chabad rabbi has announced that he is forming a new party - one that could become stronger than the Jewish Home.

MK Tzvi Hendel, from the former Tekumah faction of the newly-unified Jewish Home party, says that no one is talking about a split, “but there was a mishap, and it will have to be corrected.”  He was referring to the decision to rule out primaries for party leader.

Speaking with Arutz-7’s Yigal Shok on Wednesday, Hendel explained that the party’s 39-member Public Council had made its decision based on an early and uncorrected version of a recommendation by the parties’ MKs.  Hendel supports Uri Ariel’s bid to become party leader; the other main candidate is Zevulun Orlev of the former National Religious Party.

Primaries Over Council's Head?

Hendel said that there was even a chance that primaries would be held for party leader despite the Public Council’s decision. He did not mention the compromise proposal put forth by candidate Yigal Bibi: holding a vote for party leader among some 5,000 leading religious-Zionist educators and personalities.

The party's Knesset candidates will be chosen, all agree, by the Public Council.  The Council has a mandate to replace nearly all of the incumbent MKs, and some observers feel that that is what it will do.

New Party Forming on the Right

Meanwhile, however, the party faces a threat from yet another angle: Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe, a Chabad-Lubavitch member who heads the Our Land of Israel movement, has announced that he is starting a new party and will run in the elections. 

If he attracts right-wing voters from the hareidi-religious public, and if he includes Baruch Marzel of Hevron, and possibly even secular right-wing candidates such as MK Aryeh Eldad, many observers feel that the party could gain several seats in the next Knesset.

Hareidi, Nationalist, Secular

As one Wolpe supporter noted, “The real right-wing in Israel is renewing itself as hareidi, nationalist and secular” – consciously omitting the religious-Zionist public that has formed the hard core of Land of Israel support for decades.