United Torah Judaism would like to lower the electoral threshold for Israel's parliament from 3.25% to only 2%, a bill sponsored by the party shows.
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As the prospect of early election grows, the move is believed to be a way for UTJ leader Moshe Gafni to promote a split in the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox party while still ensuring the factions comprising it – Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael – are elected.
Israel's parliamentary threshold has changed several times over the past 30 years. Until the 1992 elections for the 13th Knesset, a party needed to win only 1% of the votes to secure representation in parliament. Leading up to those elections, the electoral threshold was raised to 1.5%. In May 2004, during the 16th Knesset's term, the electoral threshold was raised to 2%, and on March 11, 2014, the 19th Knesset raised it to 3.25% – the equivalent of four Knesset seats – where it currently stands.
The union between Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael was created ahead of the 1992 election, in which the United Torah Judaism slate won four Knesset seats. In January 2004, the party split back into its two factions following a disagreement over how to join then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's coalition. Ahead of the March 2006 vote – in a bid to prevent vote wasting – UTJ again consolidated.
The Haredi party won eight seats in the April 2019 elections – its strongest political performance to date. The March 2021 elections, however, saw it slip to seven seats.
Polls currently predict United Torah Judaism could win seven or eight parliamentary seats in the next election, but it is unclear how the votes would split between Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael in the event each faction ran independently or whether each faction could meet the mandatory four-seat requirement to enter the Knesset.
Gafni "thinks he'll have more votes" if Degel HaTorah were to run alone, according, Ultra-Orthodox political analyst Avi Grinzweig told The Times of Israel.
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