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Left-wing Meretz party votes for its Knesset list

The Meretz leader voiced readiness to join forces with Labor and a new party headed by former prime minister Ehud Barak to create a larger center-left bloc.

By World Israel News Staff 

The Meretz party is holding a primary Thursday to determine its list that will run in the September 17 Knesset election. Nitzan Horowitz won the election for the leadership of the party in late June.

Meretz, which was a key partner in the Israeli government that granted self-rule to the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in 1993, gained only four seats in the 120-member parliament in the April Knesset election.

In general, the left has been much weaker in Israeli politics over the past decade.

Israelis are being forced to vote again in September after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a new governing majority coalition following the April election.

Horowitz has voiced his readiness to join forces with Labor and a new party established by former prime minister Ehud Barak in an effort to create a larger center-left bloc that could create a greater challenge to Netanyahu’s efforts to set up a center-right government after the September election.

It would mean incorporating the lists of the three parties and running as one entity on election day. The plan would be to help Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to become the next prime minister.

In April, Netanyahu’s Likud party and Blue and White each finished with 35 seats. An opinion poll released by Kan public television on Tuesday showed them finishing tied again in September but with only 30 seats each.

The poll showed both Likud and Blue and White having difficulty in cobbling together a parliamentary majority.