Israel’s upcoming election officially took shape on Tuesday night, as the last of 38 parties submitted their candidate slates for the October 27 vote.
The parties registering their lists ahead of Tuesday’s 10 p.m. deadline ranged from the ruling Likud party to Blue and White, the centrist faction widely expected to fall short of entering the Knesset. Also submitting on Tuesday evening were the Knesset’s two Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, plus the far-right Religious Zionism, and the Joint List comprising three mostly Arab factions.
But while the candidate lists featured a smattering of new names and last-moment recruits, there were no eleventh-hour mergers. Despite heavy speculation that some parties would unite, the flurry of party registrations this week ended with the electoral landscape largely unchanged, and still deadlocked between supporters and opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Perhaps the most surprising element of the lists concerned who was absent: Likud’s slate included just four women among its top 30 candidates. Shas and United Torah Judaism, as in every election, submitted lists with zero female politicians. Religious Zionism, expected to win six seats or fewer, had one woman in its top six. The Joint List, polling at seven, placed its top female candidate in the eighth spot.
