Likud’s roughly 4,500-member Central Committee approved a proposal on Monday to significantly expand Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s control over the party’s Knesset slate, granting him eight reserved slots in the top 29 places on the list ahead of the October 27 election.

The measure gives Netanyahu unprecedented influence over more than a third of the party’s realistic slate, with Likud currently polling at 21-23 seats, after months of delayed negotiations and his failed efforts to cancel primaries and form a committee to select candidates.

The vote came a day after Likud’s internal court struck down Netanyahu’s bid to allow the party to cancel its August 17 primary in the event of a “wartime situation” and instead select candidates through an appointed committee controlled by the premier.

It passed despite rare public dissent from within Likud, led by MK David Bitan, who argued it would push incumbent lawmakers down the list in favor of Netanyahu’s handpicked candidates. There are also concerns that the move could elevate candidates who are highly popular among the Likud base — including MK Tally Gotliv and ministers Shlomo Karhi and May Golan — but who internal party polling suggests are less appealing to moderate right-wing and swing voters whose support could prove decisive in the upcoming national election.

Likud uses a complex primary system to determine much, though not all, of its candidate list, and has long prided itself on its internal democratic processes.

In a video released before the vote on Monday, Bitan urged Central Committee members to reject the proposal, accusing Likud Constitution Committee chairman and minister Haim Katz of “building a faction within a faction” and suggesting........

© The Times of Israel