Netanyahu's Likud Chooses List for January Election
Members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling rightwing Likud party were slugging it out in a party primary on Sunday to choose the frontrunners for a January 22 parliamentary race.
The primary among Likud's 123,000 registered members was to select a list of parliamentary candidates which will be put to voters in the January general election.
Netanyahu's position as party leader was already confirmed by Likud's governing central committee in February.
Polling stations opened at 9:00 am (0700 GMT) and were to close 13 hours later at 10:00 pm (2000 GMT) with results due out by midnight (2200 GMT).
But a party statement on Sunday evening said voting had been extended by two hours due to technical problems at computerized polling stations, and that officials were discussing whether to extend voting by an additional day.
A party statement said that by 6:50 pm, 23.5 percent of those entitled to vote had done so.
Netanyahu cast his ballot at the Givat Zeev settlement just north of Jerusalem, urging members to come and vote, a statement said.
Analysts are keen to see if the party tilts further to the right in response to public disaffection over a truce deal which on Wednesday ended Israel's eight-day Operation Pillar of Defense against Gaza militants, halting plans for a major ground operation.
The ballot will also be a test of the strength of the far-right Jewish settler lobby, led by Moshe Feiglin, within the party.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Feiglin said that although Likud supporters in the south, which bore the brunt of the Gaza rocket fire, were dissatisfied with what they saw as a premature ceasefire, they would remain loyal and not defect to far-right parties.
"Despite the justified hard feelings of the people in the south, they will come and vote today and also on January 22," he said, adding that Likud also needed to walk a clearer path.
"Likud needs to return to the straight path, to end confusion about its values, to say: This is our land," he said.
Last week, the settler lobby published a front-page advert in the English-language Jerusalem Post ranking Likud candidates on the basis of their opposition to a Palestinian state and how many settlements they had helped build.
According to army radio, Netanyahu has been putting pressure on his supporters to block any candidates seen as too extreme so that he will be able to present a "moderate" list which will not alienate centrist voters.
The vote comes just four days after Israel ended its Gaza campaign, accepting an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire deal with Hamas without sending troops in for a widely-expected ground operation.
According to a poll published on Friday in Maariv newspaper, 49 percent of respondents thought Israel should have continued the operation, while just under a third -- 31 percent -- agreed with the decision to accept a truce.
Netanyahu has insisted that Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza met all its objectives.
But the Maariv poll found that if an election were held now, Likud's joint list with the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu would win only 37 seats, compared with the 43 projected in an earlier survey on October 29.
They hold 42 seats between them in the outgoing governing coalition which, including other smaller parties, holds close to 70 seats altogether in the 120-seat Knesset.
After Likud selects its election candidates in order of preference, an internal committee of Yisrael Beitenu will choose its own list of prospective MPs and the two parties will then draft a combined list.
Source: Agence France Presse
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