Yoaz Hendel

So if the Arab voters decide not to come out in droves or otherwise, then that means there are fewer voters.

And so the 3.25% is even more tricky to assess in terms of how it affects the Yoaz Hendel slash the Zalikha slash Enad Wilf party or things of that nature, these very small parties that are on the cusp.

What would that do for them? So It's all very interesting.

Of course, next week we'll find out what the High Court of Justice says about these.

It's one of these mergers of two parties.

It's got a very unwieldy name, but it's led by Yoaz Hendel, who's this center-right politician, and Yaron Zalecha, who is an economist.

who is really the one guy putting economics front and center.

But as you look at the polls, this party is polling near the bottom.

This week, there were more surprising unions.

Former Minister of Communications Yoaz Hendel, the head of a party called HaMiluimnikim, the Reservists, who until this week was running in a centrist party called the Zionist Home on a platform calling for forming a left-right national unity government and drafting Haredim, ultra-Orthodox, joined together with former Labor MK Einat Wilf and neoliberal former accountant general of the Ministry of Finance and present-day economics professor Yaron Zelekha.

What is strange about this throuple is that each of the three party heads are deeply ideological, but it is hard to discern just where their ideologies overlap, save for the fact that each of the three is convinced that until ultra-Orthodox men serve in the IDF, it will be impossible for the country to solve all the other problems it faces, meaning winning wars, fixing the economy, restoring the country's standing in the world, and so on.

Another odd coupling that happened just before the final irrevocable lists were submitted this week is this.

He is dead set against making Israel a Halakhic state, which Bezalel Smotrich says is his end-of-days goal.

Alongside all these odd couplings, the Knesset list contains some bedfellows that maybe aren't all that strange but still matter.

Gili Trouper, who for the past two months was running together with Yoaz Hendel in their now disbanded Zionist Home party, which promised that it would support neither a right-wing government nor a center-left government, but only a national unity government, this week joined forces with Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the center-left camp, who has out-and-out rejected the idea of a national unity government.

All of which raises general questions, Judah, and specific ones.

With the election lists closing on Tuesday night.

Chili Tropper and Yoaz Hendel announced Sunday that they will not run together.

Tropper is rumoured to be joining Gary Eisencott's Yashar party, but there has been no official announcement.

Hendel, who joined forces with Tropper after the latter left blue and white, will not be part of the move and says he will stand in the election come what may.

And, you know, I don't know what the parties are or what they stand for, but we know the leaders.

You've thrown out these names, Yoaz Hendel, Ofel Winter, Enad Wilf.

Are they just personality parties?

I think they really are.

And then talking about ego trips and vanity projects, Dalia, we also have the non-left, non-right, this kind of so-called third block, of parties all below the electoral threshold.

So people like Benny Gantz, Khalid Torper and Yoaz Hendel, who are kind of helming this reservist party or pro-reservist party.

You also have the Likud B party led by Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein.

These are former senior Likud ministers considered more moderate than the present day Likud.

There are a couple of other important parties.

You mentioned Ofer Winter from the right, very much from the right, uh, but then two, another party from the right but softer right, uh, he- led by Gilad Erdan, former ambassador to the UN and minister, and another party led by Philip Tropper and, and, and Yoaz Hendel.

Doesn't matter exactly, but they're, uh, more center but leaning very much toward Eisenkot.

And they are m- at the moment polling below the threshold, and I expect they would join, the last party would join Eisenkot before, uh, the actual submission of lists.