The main difference between the two relates to ethnicity. United Torah Judaism represents the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox community, whose recent ancestry is traced to Europe. Shas, meanwhile, represents the Mizrahim, Jews whose families hailed mostly from the Arab world.
Shas, observed Gurvitz, has blended its rigid belief in divine law with nationalism more easily than UTJ because of its long-held anti-Arab positions. A section of its followers serve in the army. Some also work, unlike most Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox men, who devote themselves to studying the Torah.
The UTJ, by contrast, has adapted more slowly. Historically, it was anti-Zionist, rejecting the secular institutions of an Israeli state including the army and the courts until the Messiah arrived to build God's kingdom.
But over the past two decades, its leaders too have gradually, though more reluctantly, moved into the nationalist fold.
That change, according to Gurvitz, has happened because, given the ultra-Orthodox public's high birth rates, many have been forced to seek cheap housing solutions in the settlements.
"As they move into the settlements, their politics shift further rightwards," said Gurvitz. "Nowadays they give their leaders hell if they don't stick fast to ultra-nationalistic positions, or if they try to cut deals with parties outside the right."
Gurvitz added: "This means the ultra-Orthodox parties are today effectively in the bag for Netanyahu."
Orders from GodThe third bloc comprises various small far-right parties representing what are known in Israel as the national-religious camp those who subscribe to the ideology of the settler community.
Gurvitz estimates the camp numbers close to one million or about one in seven of Israel's Jewish population. About half live in the settlements of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The majority are religious, but not all of them.
The camp has proved fractious, but its three main parties established an electoral coalition last week called United Right, which polls currently suggest may win up to 14 seats.
The oldest of the parties is Jewish Home, whose new leader is Rafael Peretz, a former chief rabbi of the Israeli army and currently serving as Netanyahu's interim education minister.
Peretz has caused controversy recently by referring to a trend of American Jews marrying non-Jews as a "second Holocaust" and by speaking out in favour of gay conversion therapy, claiming to have performed it himself successfully in the past.
The second party, Tkuma, is led by Bezalel Smotrich, currently the transport minister. After being appointed, he declared that he took his orders from God, not Netanyahu.
Smotrich has in the past called for a shoot-to-kill policy against Palestinian children who throw stones, and demanded segregated maternity wards to prevent Israeli and Palestinian citizens mixing. He has also described himself as a "proud homophobe".
Both Peretz and Smotrich were due to deliver speeches this week at a ceremony honouring Yitzchak Ginsburgh. The controversial rabbi has praised the King's Torah, a notorious handbook that sanctions the murder of Palestinian children, and has previously lauded Baruch Goldstein, who massacred dozens of Palestinians in a Hebron mosque in 1994.
Gaza's 'little snakes'The third party in the coalition, New Right, which broke from Jewish Home late last year, narrowly failed to pass the electoral threshold in April, costing Netanyahu his victory.
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