Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spent the past two days making personal calls to members of his Likud party—an unusual gesture that signals real concern brewing inside his circle.
The outreach reflects a simple fear: the upcoming party primary will likely push a significant number of sitting lawmakers into positions on the ballot where they have no realistic chance of winning a seat in the next Knesset. For politicians used to holding power, the prospect is unsettling.
Netanyahu's advisers see a concrete risk here. Lawmakers who lose in primaries and get pushed down the list may become targets for opposition parties seeking to destabilize the government before elections take place. One option they're thinking about: a constructive vote of no confidence, a parliamentary maneuver that lets the Knesset remove the government and hand power to the opposition without new elections.
The timing creates a particular vulnerability. These same lawmakers will keep their current seats in the Knesset for months after they learn their time in Likud is effectively over. That's a window when unhappy members could prove useful to opposition strategists looking to orchestrate a political move against Netanyahu.
Netanyahu's team is talking about the risk, according to party sources. But they say there's no sign of an organized effort yet to exploit it. Still, the danger is real enough that the prime minister felt he needed to make some calls.
