Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rightist Likud party lost four veteran centrists and gained a batch of far stauncher hawks after Monday night's primary vote to set a slate of candidates for Knesset (Israeli parliament) elections in January 2013.

About 59 percent of the party's more than 123,000 members cast ballots in a two-day vote -- extended due to severe and embarrassing technical problems with the online touchpad voting system, which marred the tallying at 132 polling sites countrywide.

Netanyahu, addressing party faithful at a Tel Aviv exhibition center at the conclusion of the tallying late Monday, said the outcome "represent all parts of the nation," and characterized Likud as "the people's party."

Veteran Likudniks, considered moderates in the "national- liberal" fold, placed very low on the party list, and some are rumored to be weighing leaving politics.

Meanwhile, it was the debut of hard-right ideologue Moshe Feiglin at 15th place, ahead of Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, former minister Tzachi Hanegbi and former Netanyahu aide Ophir Akunis, that made the most waves.

Netanyahu has twice headed off Feiglin's entry into the party, which Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat, now in the party's top 20 members, in the past criticized as a "hostile takeover" of the Likud.

Feiglin, who told Army radio that "relations with Netanyahu have improved," said "I changed my style but not my values," including toning down fiery nationalistic rhetoric.

Meanwhile, Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Likud are running a joint list in the race to the 19th Knesset in January. As part of the deal, a yet-to-be-decided Yisrael Beitenu candidate will be installed after every two Likud candidates by Dec. 6.

Nationalists and many residents of over 120 West Bank settlements saw Feiglin's entry as a nod to their side of the political map. Many consider Netanyahu as weak and vacillating when faced with pushing their interests to the top of Israel's agenda.

In his remarks, however, the prime minister sought to both assuage their faction, as well as position Likud as a rightist " big-tent" party.

"Israel needs an experienced, responsible leadership," Netanyahu said. "In order for us to keep safeguarding security, the economy and workplaces, we need one big Likud. I believe the citizens of Israel this time will not waste their ballots on fragments of small parties. Together, we will continue to lead the state of Israel."

At Jerusalem's International Convention Center polling place, party members from the greater Jerusalem areas, including settlements to the north and south, cast their ballots.

"I'm with the right-wing of the Likud," Tzvi Weissman, a resident of the large and ideologically influential West Bank town of Beit El, north of Ramallah, told Xinhua.

On a nearby bench, elderly Jerusalemite and veteran British immigrant Flik Amos, told Xinhua that the army's "Operation Pillar of Defense" to halt Hamas rocket fire from Gaza into Israel was not enough, and that Netanyahu's agreeing to the fragile American- Egyptian-brokered ceasefire would likely affect her vote.

"It didn't go far enough," she said of the some 1,500 airstrikes on rockets, launchers, and military infrastructure, to put a stop to an near equal numbers of launches into Israeli towns and cities that killed six and wounded and traumatized hundreds of others across southern Israel surrounding the coastal enclave.

Daniel Tauber, an American immigrant and head of the party's western English-speaking faction, told Xinhua that he hoped members "would vote for candidates that want to see terrorists destroyed."

"If this was in the United States, if one rocket had been fired, people would be clamoring for heads," he said, adding that "I think about my daughter, and the fact that one day she's going to be subjected to the threat of terror." Endi

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