Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party announced early Tuesday that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Likud Central Committee chair Haim Katz will be granted guaranteed spots on the party’s electoral list ahead of the primary later this month.

The three men will be given reserved placements separate from the eight slots set aside for candidates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s choosing, the Likud announcement said, meaning that in total, 11 of the first 29 spaces on the ruling party’s list will go to hand-picked candidates rather than to those elected by the party’s roughly 140,000 members at the upcoming August 17 primary.

The decision, announced just after 1 a.m., will be brought to the Likud secretariat for approval later on Tuesday.

Justifying the decision, Likud claimed that the party’s internal court had ruled that Israel Katz could be given a reserved spot on the list “in order to allow him to deal with security needs and not engage in politics at this time.”

It claimed that the court had ruled as such because the defense minister “was expected to place high on the list anyway” and thus guaranteeing his position would not make much of a difference.

Furthermore, it noted that Sa’ar had been guaranteed a reserved slot on the list under the terms of last year’s merger between his New Hope party and Likud, and that Haim Katz deserved a reserved spot by dint of his position as the central committee chair.

The 1 a.m. missive, which failed to explain why the three men were not simply allocated three of the eight reserved........

© The Times of Israel