A key internal Likud panel on Sunday agreed to grant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu eight reserved slots on the Knesset list and to cancel the upcoming party primary altogether if it cannot be held because of a possible “wartime situation,” effectively capitulating to the premier’s monthslong push for unprecedented control over the party’s candidate list.

Under the plan, the reserved slots will not require any further approval by the party’s 4,500-member Central Committee, which was supposed to vote on the matter on Thursday.

The Likud Constitution Committee, chaired by MK Haim Katz, also authorized Netanyahu to convene a five-member organizing committee of Likud mayors to determine the party’s candidate list if gathering restrictions or other security conditions prevent the party’s primary from taking place.

Addressing committee members, Netanyahu reportedly claimed that he remains “in favor of a primary,” but argued that “there is a possibility that we could find ourselves in an exceptional security situation that would make it difficult to hold campaign events.”

“It could fall on the day of the vote or beforehand, and that would make voting difficult,” he said.

The decision gives Netanyahu both the enlarged quota of reserved slots he had demanded and a contingency route to replace the primary with a committee, after he previously threatened to cancel the internal election altogether if his demands were not met, despite previous resistance from Likud lawmakers and local authority heads, who opposed both measures.

The approval comes days after a court temporarily halted a previous vote on the proposed primary rules following a legal challenge by the Likud Social Forum, which alleged procedural and non-democratic flaws. As part of the agreement, the party’s primary is expected to be postponed until August 17.

Netanyahu’s proposal was cleared for the committee’s approval after an internal party tribunal blocked attempts to introduce a competing proposal, following a tense overnight hearing, Hebrew media outlets reported on Sunday.

Any such competing proposals, the court reportedly said, would amount to “changing the rules in the middle of the game.”

The tribunal ruled that conference delegates must first vote on primary voting regulations........

© The Times of Israel