Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly invited Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich to merge their parties ahead of the 27 October election, saying no vote can go to waste and that the parties must unite to save the right wing bloc. Ben Gvir's Otzma Yehudit answered within the same day: there will be no talks, or meetings, or discussions on the topic.
Likud's response to the refusal was harsher than the invitation had been. It accused Ben Gvir of risking tens of thousands of right wing votes and said he was effectively enabling a left wing government led by Gadi Eisenkot, the Yashar leader currently polling ahead of Netanyahu. A proposed meeting for Sunday did not happen.
The arithmetic behind the pressure is specific. Israel's electoral threshold is 3.25 percent of the vote, and a Zman Yisrael poll has Ofer Winter's new People of Israel party at 6 seats while placing Smotrich's Religious Zionism below that line. A separate poll found 69 percent of Winter's voters came from the pro Netanyahu bloc, which is itself projected at 51 seats, ten short of a majority. Ben Gvir and Smotrich ran together in 2022 and won 14 seats combined.
This was Netanyahu's second merger attempt in two days, and Ben Gvir had already ruled the idea out in June, before Winter's party existed to make the threshold problem worse. Refusing to merge protects Otzma Yehudit's own identity and seat count. Whether it also costs the bloc a government is the argument Likud is now making in public rather than in private.