Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party is undergoing turmoil, with a fourth defector announcing on Tuesday that he is leaving the party, which is polling under the electoral threshold
MK Eitan Ginzburg, who served as CEO of the Blue and White party and entered the Knesset during the last term, announced on Tuesday that he is leaving the party. It is believed that he will join the “Together” party led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.
Ginzburg is the fourth Knesset member to leave in recent months. The first was Matan Kahana, who left less than a year ago to join the Yashar party established by former number two Gadi Eisenkot. Kahana was followed by MK Orit Farkash-Hacohen, who also joined Yashar, and earlier this week, Chili Tropper also announced he was leaving Blue and White. Tropper was among the party’s founders and a senior partner from its earliest days.
Kahana has already resigned from the Knesset, but Farkash-Hacohen has not—and neither has Tropper. Gantz issued an ultimatum to Tropper and Farkash-Hacohen to resign from the Knesset in order to prevent the transfer of campaign funding to Yashar.
However, later on Tuesday, a joint statement issued by Gantz and Tropper said that the latter agreed to remain in the Knesset “so as not to grant an additional vote to the coalition that would help it advance the draft exemption law and harm IDF soldiers and Israeli society.”
If Tropper resigned from the Knesset, he would be replaced by the next candidate on the joint Blue and White–New Hope list that was elected to the Knesset in 2022. Since Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope is now in the coalition, Tropper’s resignation would grant the coalition a new member.
Apart from Gantz, only three party members remain in Blue and White: MK Pnina Tamano-Shata, MK Michael Biton, and MK Alon Schuster.
In other political news, Eisenkot announced on Tuesday the addition of former Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen to his Yashar party.
Cohen is one of the four former left-wing Shin Bet chiefs who led a campaign against the appointment of Maj. Gen. David Zini as head of the Shin Bet amid a broader campaign by Haaretz and other leftist entities.
(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
