Yamina leader Naftali Bennett and Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas met Wednesday morning in Bennett's office in the Knesset to discuss the positions of their two parties given the current political situation.

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Both described the meeting as "good."

The two party leaders decided to sit down given the uncertainty about whether President Reuven Rivlin would give the mandate to form a government to Bennett or Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unable to form a government.

According to political officials, Rivlin is unlikely to grant Netanyahu an extension once the original 28-day mandate runs out.

Meanwhile, the Religious Zionist Party launched a campaign Wednesday morning urging Yamina not to join any government that rets on the Arab parties.

"Bennett, a government with [Mansour] Abbas is a government with Hamas," one of the messages read.

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"The right will not forgive [Defense Minister Naftali] Bennett, [Transportation Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and [Education Minister Rafi] Peretz if they do not unite into a single list," Netanyahu tweeted. "Two lists may fall below the electoral threshold and lead to the rise of a leftist government."

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Bennett's New Right, Smotrich's National Union, and Peretz's Habayit Hayehudi parties ran in a unified bloc prior to the September elections, with the far-right Otzma Yehudit backing away due to disagreements regarding the positions of the seats they were offered in the intermingled party list.

However, Peretz recently signed a pact to run with Otzma Yehudit without consulting Smotrich or members of his own party, leading to outrage among his former running mates and discussions between Bennett and Smotrich as to a possible merger.

Recent polls have shown that for now, of the parties in question, only New Right is slated to pass the threshold and enter the next Knesset.

"We appreciate Netanyahu's concern," the New Right responded to Netanyahu's missive. "We will continue our work of bringing votes from the Blue and White and [Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor] Lieberman, for the sake of creating a strong and secure right-wing government for the citizens of Israel."

Habayit Hayehudi said in response to Netanyahu's warning that "the Jewish Home calls on Bennett and Smotrich to come and unite with us in one large Jewish Home Party," adding, "from there you came, and to there you should return."

Right-wing voters, said Jewish Home, wanted unity and would punish parties that appeared not to.

"Past experience has shown us that our constituents do not like splits and punish us for them. The upcoming elections are crucial for the entire right-wing camp, and we must not make light of the issue," it said.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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A senior Likud minister and close associate of Netanyahu voiced harsh criticism of Gantz on Wednesday, claiming that Gantz still failed to understand that without partnering with the Likud and the smaller right-wing parties, he would not be able to form a government. According to the minister, there was little chance that Gantz would try to form a minority government that rested on support from the Arab parties, as he and Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman would pay a heavy political price for doing so.

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"If there is a need, we'll even hold a fourth election," the minister told Israel Hayom.

"Blue and White needs to understand that it can't form a government without the Likud or the parties that go with it. That will always be the case, no matter how many rounds of an election are held. The Likud won't leave Netanyahu, and Netanyahu won't leave the parties in the right-wing bloc and they won't leave him," the minister explained.

The Likud minister said that if Gantz had accepted the proposal made to him after the April 9 election, "he could have been prime minister a few months from now. He was offering a seat in a rotation [for prime minister] within a year … which would have made him prime minister in March or April [2020] – the date when, as of now, we will be holding a third election if Blue and White doesn't wake up to the situation."

Meanwhile, most of the leaders of the small right-wing parties, with the exception of the New Right, signed a pledge on Wednesday that read, "If, heaven forbid, a minority government supported by the Joint Arab List or part of it is sworn in, we will not join that government at any stage. We will vote against it in every vote and work to bring it down in every way possible."

The right-wing leaders also made a commitment to join "only a government under Netanyahu that will include the undersigned, whether in the framework of a right-wing government or in the framework of a unity government with a rotation."

Former Education Minister Naftali Bennett and former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked refused to sign the pledge because they saw it as unnecessary.

Although MK David Bitan (Likud) said that he thought Netanyahu should return the mandate to President Reuven Rivlin, his fellow Likud MK Miki Zohar was staunchly opposed to the idea.

"The fact that Lieberman still hasn't declared that he will not allow the establishment of a minority government supported by the Joint Arab List is very disturbing," Zohar told Israel Hayom.

"It's mostly dangerous for Israel's security. Any government that is established and rests on support from the Arabs will be exposed to extortion on security issues that benefits our enemies. I call on the prime minister not to return the mandate to the president until Lieberman makes it clear he will not allow such a government to be formed," Zohar said.

However, Leiberman was still refusing on Wednesday to state that he would not support the formation of a minority government. In a Facebook post, he wrote, "We have no intention of addressing this spin from the Likud or any other spins. If they want to sit down with us for serious coalition negotiations, first they need to break up the haredi-messianic bloc and then we can discuss everything."

The smaller right-wing parties also aimed barbs at both Lieberman and Blue and White following the Israel Hayom report.

New Right chairman Naftali Bennett wrote, "the dark trick of establishing a minority government that is based on votes from the anti-Zionist Joint Arab List and Lieberman's refusal [to prevent it] is an immoral idea that will taint those who perpetrate it. It will also fail, because no party will join a government that is established that way, so it won't be in power for more than a few weeks."

Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich, however, did not reject the idea of a minority government and claimed that even if one were formed, it would be short-lived.

"It's actually not a bad idea," Smotrich wrote.

"A government like that wouldn't last very long, and then the Right would see a huge win in an election. A move like that would expose Lieberman's true colors and label him as far on the Left. This could definitely be the best solution for the crisis we're engulfed in," Smotrich argued.

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"I will bring the deal to the Zehut leadership, and we'll decide. An unexpected opportunity has arisen to turn what appeared to be a failure into a great success," Feiglin said.

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Feiglin's statements on Wednesday contradicted remarks he made a day earlier at an election event at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds, where he stressed that his party would not drop out of the Knesset race. Some 1,000 Zehut supporters attended the Tel Aviv event.

On Monday, Israeli media reported that the Likud was pressuring Zehut and Otzma Yehudit, both small right-wing parties, to drop out of the national election. Neither of the two parties – Otzma Yehudit and Zehut – is expected to gain enough votes to enter the Knesset, and the Likud is seeking to prevent right-wing votes from being wasted.

Likud negotiator Natan Eshel has reportedly pressured Otzma Yehudit Party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir to drop out of the race, while Likud officials are said to have offered Feiglin an economy-related ministry position, to cover all of his campaign costs to date and legalize personal use of marijuana – one of Zehut's central campaign promises – if his party withdraws.

Part of this article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Likud negotiator Natan Eshel has reportedly pressured Otzma Yehudit Party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir to drop out of the race, while Likud officials are said to have offered Zehut leader Moshe Feiglin an economy-related ministry position, to cover all of his campaign costs to date and legalize personal use of marijuana – one of Zehut's central campaign promises – if his party withdraws.

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The Otzma Yehudit and Zehut parties are unlikely to garner enough seats to enter the Knesset, according to polls published Monday on Channel 11 News. The same poll gave Likud 32 seats, and Blue and White 31.

However, so far neither party has expressed any intention of dropping out.

In a Facebook post, Feiglin wrote "I will not violate my assurance to voters," though "pressure is being applied" with "constant offers." In the same post, he announced a party conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday to "gather steam for [the] elections."

Ben-Gvir, in a statement following a meeting with Eshel, said that "without Otzma Yehudit there is no right-wing government and Netanyahu cannot form a government."

Each party running for the Knesset compiles a list of 120 potential Knesset members. The number of representatives of each party who actually wind up serving in the Knesset is based on the percentage of the vote the party receives in a Knesset election. The minimum electoral threshold required to enter the Knesset is 3.25% of the vote, meaning that the fewest MKs a given party can have in the Knesset is four. The rules for determining Knesset lists vary from party to party, but most of the major parties allow leaders to reserve spots for specific representatives or representatives of specific sectors such as women, minorities, and immigrants.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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However, there was also good news for the right-wing parties: according to the poll, all of them – with the exception of Moshe Feiglin's Zehut party – are expected to make it past the minimum electoral threshold of 3.25%.

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The poll, conducted among a representative sample of 507 adult Israelis with a margin of error of 4.3%, also indicated that whether the parties to the Right of the Likud or the parties on the Left manage to join forces and run as a "mega-bloc," Lieberman will remain in a position to tip the scales.

Netanyahu's Likud party was predicted to win 31 seats, with the center-left Blue and White party close on its heels at 30 seats. Labor, under newly elected leader and veteran legislator Amir Peretz, was predicted to win eight seats, with the same number predicted for the United Right.

United Torah Judaism was predicted to win seven seats – the same number projected for the secularist Lieberman. Six seats were predicted for both Shas and Meretz, under new party leader Nitzan Horowitz.

Four seats each were predicted for former prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief of staff Ehud Barak's new party and for the New Right under former Education Minister Naftali Bennett.

The poll predicted nine seats for the Joint Arab List.

When asked who they thought was best qualified to serve as prime minister, 35% of respondents picked Netanyahu. Less than one-quarter (22%) of respondents picked Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, and 12% said Barak was the best candidate for prime minister.

The poll also looked into the viability of various joint lists and party mergers. According to the results, if Labor MK Itzik Shmuli or Stav Shafir had been elected head of Labor and as a result, Labor had run on a joint list with Barak's party and Meretz, the resulting left-wing list would have won 19 seats. However, that appears unlikely to happen with Peretz as Labor leader. If that scenario had come to pass, the left-wing list would have chipped away at Blue and White, leaving Gantz's party with only 26 seats.

On the other side of the political map, if Habayit Hayehudi, the National Union, Otzma Yehudit, the New Right, and Zehut were to run together, the resulting right-wing list would scoop up no less than 19 seats, the poll showed. In that case, the list would take some seats away from the Likud, leaving Netanyahu's party with 25 seats, and the right-wing bloc would still be unable to form a coalition without Lieberman.

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