Ed. note: Shortly after the tentative agreement was reached, it fell apart after the Likud party named Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, Yair, to a top World Zionist Organization position. Read more about it here.

The center-left and center-right blocs of the World Zionist Congress reached a coalition agreement on Wednesday, under which they will split control of the World Zionist Organization and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, a WZO official told eJewishPhilanthropy.

Under the agreement, the WZO and KKL-JNF chairs’ terms will be split in two, with the WZO first going to the center-right faction and the KKL-JNF first going to the center-left. Halfway through the five-year term, the leadership will swap, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The next chair of the WZO will be Rabbi Doron Perez, the chair of the religious Zionist World Mizrachi movement and the father of Capt. Daniel Perez, who was killed in the Oct. 7 attacks and whose remains were held captive by Hamas until earlier this month. Meir Cohen, a Knesset member of the Yesh Atid party will serve as chair of KKL-JNF, which owns more than 10% of the land of Israel, making it one of Israel’s most highly influential and wealthy organizations. After two and a half years, the WZO will be chaired by an as-yet-undecided representative of Yesh Atid, and KKL-JNF will be chaired by an as-yet-undecided representative of the Likud party.

The deal has been agreed upon verbally but not yet signed, but is expected to be on Wednesday evening, according to WZO Vice Chair Yizhar Hess, the head of the Conservative movement’s Mercaz Olami faction, who spearheaded the center-left faction’s negotiations.

“The agreement that will be signed this evening is a significant achievement for the Masorti/Conservative movement and our liberal/pluralistic allies, which strengthens our position in the national institutions and ensures our values will be reflected at the only democratic table of the Jewish People,” Hess said in a statement.

The agreement represents a victory for the center-left camp, which was able to negotiate better terms, despite being slightly smaller than the center-right, due to a schism within the Likud, which leads the center-right coalition. This was made possible, in part, because of support from the non-elected Zionist institutions with voting rights who pushed back against an attempt by right-wing parties to take full control of the National Institutions.

In addition to the power-sharing aspects, the agreement also guarantees greater funding for non-Orthodox and pluralistic Jewish initiatives, in a victory for the center-left bloc, the WZO official said. The deal also grants control of the WZO’s Settlement Division to the center-right faction, through which it can support West Bank settlements. The agreement also excludes the far-right Otzma Yehudit political party from the National Institutions.

The agreement was reached the day after the 39th World Zionist Congress began. The main voting sessions for the congress were initially scheduled for Thursday, but they were moved up a day due to a large Haredi anti-enlistment protest that has also been scheduled for Thursday in Jerusalem, which would have made it difficult for delegates to arrive or leave Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, where the congress is being held.

Unlike most political bodies, the World Zionist Congress is not designed as a “winner take all” organization, with a ruling coalition and an opposition. Instead, the congress allocates positions within the so-called National Institutions — WZO, KKL-JNF, the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Keren Hayesod fundraising organization — largely based on the shares of seats that different factions have earned in the elections held every five years. In general, the leadership of the organizations goes to the larger faction, with lower-ranking positions going to the smaller one. Such was the case in 2020, when the Likud gained control of both the WZO and KKL-JNF.

Though the center-right faction slightly edged out the center-left in this year’s elections, the congress is nearly evenly split. 

Hess, speaking before the coalition agreement was signed, said that he was pushing for a “balanced agreement” that reflected the outcome of the voting.

“The results of the elections presented a tie between center-left and center-right. It’s about 50-50 — OK, very close to 50-50 — and therefore any agreement that we will be signing… will be an agreement that splits the powers between central-left and central-right,” Hess told eJP.

Hess and others involved in the negotiations on behalf of the center-left credited their success to the bloc’s cohesiveness, unlike the more divided center-right. The center-left coalition included the Reform and Conservative movements, Yesh Atid, Labor, Meretz and Israel Beiteinu, among others.

“This fair agreement reflects the will of the voters who elected this Zionist Congress and positions us to continue working at the national institutions to address the challenges facing Israel and the Jewish people: rebuilding after October 7th, promoting unity and pluralism, combating antisemitism, and standing up for democracy and equality in Israeli society,” Hess said in a statement. “I congratulate my dear friend Rabbi Doron Peretz and all of those selected to lead the national institutions and look forward to working closely with them in the years to come.”

Most years, a coalition agreement is reached before the congress even meets. This year, reportedly due to internal divisions within World Likud, delegates arrived at the congress on Tuesday without a clear view of how the National Institutions would be divided.

“The Likud is a serious, important party in Israel and in the world arena when it comes to the National Institutions. Since there is a big split within the Likud, we need to see how it works for them in order to make sure that the coalition agreement that we sign will be respected,” Hess told eJP.

The division in the Likud centered around competition between two main camps within the party, one represented by WZO Chair Yaakov Hagoel and one by Culture Minister Miki Zohar, a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ultimately, Zohar’s camp appears to have won out and negotiated the agreement with Hess on behalf of the center-right faction, insiders told eJP.

This leaves Hagoel’s future in the National Institutions, along with his ally KKL-JNF Chair Ifat Ovadia-Luski, unclear.

In order to serve as WZO chair, Yesh Atid’s Cohen will step down from the Knesset. Oz Haim, the next person on the party’s list, will move into the Knesset to take his place, a party spokesperson said.