Nine candidates announced their candidacy for the leadership of Meretz by Monday’s deadline, and will face off in the party’s first-ever primary on March 22.The candidates are: incumbent Zehava Gal-On, MKs Ilan Gilon and Tamar Zanberg, former Peace Now secretary-general Avi Buskila and party activists Avi Dabush, Imri Kalman, David Kashana, David Naveh and Ofir Paz De Portuguese.The nine-candidate field is nearly double the size of the current Meretz faction, which has five MKs.
console.log("catid body is "+catID);if(catID==120){document.getElementsByClassName("divConnatix")[0].style.display ="none";var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = 'https://player.anyclip.com/anyclip-widget/lre-widget/prod/v1/src/lre.js'; script.setAttribute('pubname','jpostcom'); script.setAttribute('widgetname','0011r00001lcD1i_12258'); document.getElementsByClassName('divAnyClip')[0].appendChild(script);}else if(catID!=69 && catID!=2){ document.getElementsByClassName("divConnatix")[0].style.display ="none"; var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = 'https://static.vidazoo.com/basev/vwpt.js'; script.setAttribute('data-widget-id','60fd6becf6393400049e6535'); document.getElementsByClassName('divVidazoo')[0].appendChild(script); }The party’s membership drive, which ended on Sunday, resulted in Meretz boosting its numbers to some 31,000 members, including 13,000 new ones.“The fact that the party doubled its membership in a matter of months and reached a record reflects the strengthening of Meretz’s image as the main opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which I am sure will be expressed in the next election,” said MK Mossy Raz, who is the party’s secretary-general.Gal-On wrote on Facebook that she was very happy that the party had fulfilled her vision of expanding its ranks.“We went from being a closed-door club to a giant in quantity and quality,” she said. “The 30,000 Meretz members said no to Netanyahu and nyet to [Defense Minister] Avigdor Liberman. Now it is time for Meretz to enlarge the Left as a whole.”