Israel heads to the polls for the fifth time in under four years and is scheduled to hold its 25th Knesset (Israel's parliament) elections on Nov.1.
The process to submit candidate lists to the Central Election Committee started on Wednesday morning, as 55 parties have received their nomination forms so far.
Registration for parties seeking to run in the upcoming elections will end on Thursday at 10 pm.
Not all of the parties who requested the forms shall run in the upcoming elections.
In the last elections, 39 lists competed, but only 13 lists passed the electoral threshold (3.25% of the vote).
Former MK Eli Avidar’s Israel Free and Democratic party was the first to submit its list.
Avidar, who is known to be of Egyptian origin and speaks Arabic fluently, was until recently a member of Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party before rebelling against his former faction and the outgoing coalition several times and ultimately forming his own faction.
He sought to pass a law to prevent indicted politicians from becoming prime minister and accused Bennet of withholding the law citing fears from Netanyahu and his camp, and said that failure to enact this law would overthrow the government and return Netanyahu to power.
Hadar Muchtar, who chairs the Fiery Youth party, was the second to submit her list. The party is running on a platform of combating the surging cost of living and corruption. It also advocates greater public involvement in the political process by holding referendums on a number of issues.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party applied next, followed by Lieberman’s party, Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right religious Zionism party, and former Israeli Ministry of Finance accountant general Yaron Zelekha’s New Economic Party.
Most politicians postpone submitting their lists until the last moments, especially parties with disagreements, such as Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the Joint List coalition of Arab factions and others.
The three Israeli factions currently within the Joint List agreed to run together again on Wednesday.
