National Union MKs Arye Eldad and Michael Ben-Ari called on Sunday for their party to hold an open primary together with Habayit Hayehudi, shortly after National Union chairman Ya’acov Katz said such a move would be “corrupt and corrupting.”

Habayit Hayehudi and the National Union plan to run together for the next Knesset. The joint list will switch off between representatives of each party. Habayit Hayehudi MKs will be chosen through an open primary, but Katz wrote a long article on Friday saying that the only way to guarantee that National Union MKs will be “faithful to the Land of Israel” is by not holding such a vote.

Eldad and Ben-Ari said that only a primary open to the “orange public, who are faithful to their people and their land” can unite the two parties and truly represent their voters by clarifying the real balance of power between them and not “following dictates.”

“It is no secret that there are arguments within the ‘orange’ population,” the two MKs explained. “The time has come to investigate these disagreements and bring them to the public to decide.”

The National Union is currently made up of four parties: Tekuma (Katz and MK Uri Ariel), Hatikva (Eldad), Eretz Yisrael Shelanu (Ben- Ari), and Moledet. Moledet does not have any MKs, as the US-born Bank ranked fifth on the National Union candidates list, and the faction has only four MKs.

Earlier Sunday, Habayit Hayehudi primary chairman Rabbi Daniel Tropper called for the entire National Union, including Katz and Ariel, to join the primary, so it will represent the entire national- religious population. (© 1995-2011, The Jerusalem Post 02/20/12)