The Likud’s top internal court rejected a Netanyahu-backed provision that would have allowed the party to cancel its Knesset primaries in the event of a security escalation, ruling that internal elections are a constitutional obligation that cannot be replaced in advance by an appointed committee.
“The Likud is not a party of one man, and it will lose its vitality if it becomes one,” the three-member panel wrote in a ruling issued Saturday night ahead of Monday’s party convention.
The court said the “ordinary and proper route” for selecting Likud’s candidates is through primaries in which party members elect the national slate and members in each geographic district choose the candidates allocated to that district.
“There is no place to open in advance even a crack at canceling the primaries,” it ruled.
The provision had been included in a temporary election framework approved last week by the Likud constitution committee. It would have allowed the party chairman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to move to a selection committee if a security escalation resulted in restrictions on public gatherings before the primaries.
According to reports, the proposed committee would have comprised five mayors appointed by Netanyahu, who would recommend how the slate should be arranged, with the final decision left to the party chairman himself.
The court ruled that the possibility of a security emergency did not justify creating a mechanism to abandon the primaries. Instead, it identified two alternatives the party must prepare to use.
The first is postponement. The existing election regulations already permit the Likud election committee to change the date of the primaries for special reasons, the court said, adding that a genuine emergency could clearly satisfy that requirement.
It instructed the Likud’s director-general to plan for such a possibility when signing agreements with polling-site operators, venue owners, and other service providers, including through contracts whose operation depends on whether an emergency occurs.
The second alternative is electronic voting.
The court acknowledged that the Likud constitution does not currently authorize online voting. Nevertheless, it said an electronic ballot would be “a thousand times preferable” to the far more serious constitutional violation of holding no vote at all.
The party must therefore prepare an electronic alternative if it believes security conditions could prevent members from reaching polling stations, the court said.
At the center of its reasoning was the status of the party constitution itself. The court described it as a contract between the Likud and its members, and among the members themselves. Failing to hold primaries would amount to a serious breach of that agreement.
It also rejected the suggestion that an emergency could automatically excuse such a breach under the legal doctrine of contractual frustration. While the date and nature of the next security crisis cannot be predicted, the possibility that one will occur in Israel is foreseeable and must be planned for, the judges said.
“Therefore, the movement is obligated to hold primaries, and we do not see room to open the possibility of canceling them,” the ruling concluded. Should a genuinely unforeseen situation arise, the court said it would decide the matter at that time.
How do Likud primaries work?
The primaries determine the Likud’s Knesset slate, with the party chairman placed first. Registered members then vote for candidates competing on the national list, while members belonging to geographic districts vote for candidates from their respective districts.
Candidates chosen on the national list are combined with district representatives and places guaranteeing representation for groups including women, immigrants, young members and minorities. The regulations also reserve certain positions for candidates chosen by the party chairman.
In the 2022 primaries, for example, the first group of positions after the party chairman was largely filled by nationally elected candidates, while district positions and guaranteed-representation slots were inserted farther down the slate. Netanyahu was also given several reserved positions.
The precise locations of those different categories are determined before each election through the party’s temporary election regulations. That is why the current fight has centered not only on whether primaries will take place, but on how much of the resulting slate the members will actually control.
Netanyahu initially considered abolishing the primaries entirely and replacing them with a selection committee that included Likud-affiliated mayors.
The eventual compromise approved by the constitution committee retained primaries but granted Netanyahu eight reserved positions, including six among the first 20 places on the slate. The reported positions were 3, 5, 9, 11, 15, 18, 26, and 31.
The framework also prevented serving ministers, deputy ministers, and MKs from competing through the easier district track, with an exception reported for the non-Jewish sector.
Court blocks emergency clause only
The court blocked only the emergency clause that would have allowed Netanyahu to scrap the primaries altogether, and left the rest of the proposed system largely intact. Netanyahu would still receive a number of reserved places on the slate, and he would also be able to use one of those places to move a candidate who had already won a lower position in the primaries higher up the list. His chosen candidates would, however, still have to be approved by the Likud secretariat.
The judges also allowed the party to vote on these expanded powers at the same convention where it approves the rules for the coming primaries – rather than requiring a separate convention devoted solely to changing the Likud constitution.
Judge Itzhak Bam disagreed on that point, arguing that giving the party chairman such extensive control over the slate was too significant to be passed together with the technical election rules and should instead be put to a separate vote.