A new Times of Israel poll gives former IDF general Ofer Winter’s People of Israel party 6 Knesset seats — enough to push Religious Zionism, currently led by Bezalel Smotrich, below the 3.25% threshold and out of the Knesset entirely. The result is a fracture within the right bloc that Netanyahu has worked for two months to prevent.
On Thursday, Netanyahu publicly urged Ben Gvir and Smotrich to unite as a single bloc, a rare and visible act of political begging from a prime minister who has historically held them at arm’s length. Ben Gvir’s response, posted on social media, was dismissive — and accused the PM of planning to double-cross the alliance ahead of the October election.
Winter’s party launched on Tuesday with a deliberately broad slate designed to split the religious-nationalist vote. The former general has positioned himself as the disciplined, post-October 7 alternative to the existing right — a figure who will conscript the ultra-Orthodox without being conscripted by them. Netanyahu’s warning that a fractured right could hand the election to what he called the ‘fascist’ left is playing out in the polling data.
The stakes are not abstract. If Religious Zionism fails to cross the threshold, Netanyahu loses his most hardline cabinet ministers and the settlement agenda loses its driving force. Winter, meanwhile, moves from challenger to kingmaker. The Knesset arithmetic is about to get very interesting.