After a Channel 12 News poll predicted Meretz would fail to pass the electoral threshold, the party has its work cut out for it. According to two other polls, the left-wing party is expected to gain the four Knesset seats necessary to make it in to the next government.
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While Meretz hasn't resorted to scare tactics just yet, party members see the poll's results as a wakeup call to their supporters, reminding them they need to vote for Meretz if they want to make sure the party makes it into the next Knesset.
"This is decision time, and it's time to return to Meretz. Without Meretz, [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has a government," party head Nitzan Horowitz told Israel Hayom. "Without Meretz, he [Netanyahu] has 61 Knesset seats with [far-right Otzma Yehudit head Itamar] Ben-Gvir and [Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel] Smotrich. Without Meretz, there will be no one to fight them in the Knesset."
In a direct appeal to voters that, according to the polls, are now contemplating voting for other parties in the center-left bloc, Horowitz said, "I turn to all the Meretz supporters and voters that are now with Labor, Yesh Atid, and Blue and White and call on them to come home. Left-wing voters have seen time and again that there is no replacement for Meretz and its struggles against the occupation, the fascism, and the dictatorship creeping into Israel."
Meretz chairwoman Tamar Zandberg opted to focus on the historical importance of a left-wing party that has remained outside of the coalition government for the past 21 years.
Referring to the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who advocated the forced removal of Palestinians and a Jewish theocracy in Israel, Zandberg said, "You can't imagine a Knesset with Kahana's party and without [late Meretz leaders] Shulamit Aloni and Yossi Sarid. This is a party that has existed for 30 years now, fought for a world of values no one else represents, and has always kept and will always keep its promises."
Meretz MK Yair Golan said the poll was "a wakeup call for anyone interested in Israel remaining a democracy. It's either Ben-Gvir's and Netanyahu's Kahaneism and corruption or Meretz."
Meanwhile, the party is working to activate its base of what they say is around 150,000 voters. Activists are confident that despite the party's showing in the polls, if they make an effort in the three weeks leading up to the election, they will make it into the Knesset.
Activists are set to campaign at around a thousand different sites across the country to convince voters that "only Meretz can be trusted."
Party activists will now focus their campaign efforts on those deliberating between a vote for Meretz and Labor. Meretz plans to remind voters they cannot rely on the other left-wing and centrist parties, whose members say they aren't on the Left and have no problem joining the Haredim in a coalition government. They add that while many of these politicians said they would refuse to join a Netanyahu-led government when push comes to shove, they were all too happy to oblige.
They also plan to campaign for Arab votes, reminding members of the sector that both Issawi Frej and Rinawie Zoabi have a realistic chance of making it into the next Knesset.
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