Habayit Hayehudi chairman, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, and his partner of many years, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, are expected to announce on Saturday night that they would run as a new party in the 2019 elections.
The two will deliver a statement to the media at 8:15 PM in Tel Aviv.
In recent months, Bennett has been caught up in internal struggles within his party, over his attempts to change its constitution to increase the chairman’s independence. His opponents blocked his moves time and again in the party’s internal court.
In recent days, since the announcement of early elections, the Habayit Hayehudi party has remained vague about the date to be set for its primaries – and some have suggested that Bennett wants to cancel the party’s primaries altogether. Now Bennett and Shaked are pressing the chairperson of Habayit Hayehudi Knesset faction, MK Shuli Mualem-Refaeli, to join them.
With eight MKs, they will need one third of the members to split the faction according to the Knesset rules.