Who Resigns, and Who Gets Declared a Defector?
Likud has discovered a new category of political enemy: the “fake right” politician who used to be a senior Likud minister five minutes ago.
After Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein launched a new right-wing party, Likud called them “bitter fake rightists” trying to steal votes for an Eisnkot-led left-wing government.
Erdan and Edelstein replied that Likud was the party betraying the right by preserving draft evasion and abandoning military families. The Israeli right has entered its favorite phase: accusing itself of being the left.
Edelstein says he will leave Likud and resign from the Knesset in the coming days.
Dan Illouz, who joined Yisrael Beiteinu, says he will do the same after he finishes packing his office. Likud MK Avichai Boaron has given both men 24 hours to resign — or he will convene the faction and seek to have them formally declared “defectors.”
That is the comic detail. Everyone agrees they are leaving. The fight is over who gets to announce it, and which legal-political label will follow them out the door.
The procedural stakes are real. A voluntary resignation is a departure. Being declared a defector can mean losing access to party funding, political rights and the last scraps of respectability that Israeli politics still distributes on installment plans.
Edelstein and Erdan say they will not become the 61st vote for a narrow government, whoever leads it. Likud hears that as treason.
The new party calls it a refusal to serve either bloc. In an election season, every refusal to endorse Netanyahu becomes proof that you secretly work for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s lawyers have asked to cancel three hearing days in his October trial. The reason: the office’s annual vacation.
Israel’s constitutional crisis has many fronts. One of them is apparently a scheduling conflict.
#Israel #Likud #Netanyahu #Edelstein #Erdan #elections #fakeDemocracy
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Likud has discovered a new category of political enemy: the “fake right” politician who used to be a senior Likud minister five minutes ago.
After Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein launched a new right-wing party, Likud called them “bitter fake rightists” trying to steal votes for an Eisnkot-led left-wing government.
Erdan and Edelstein replied that Likud was the party betraying the right by preserving draft evasion and abandoning military families. The Israeli right has entered its favorite phase: accusing itself of being the left.
Edelstein says he will leave Likud and resign from the Knesset in the coming days.
Dan Illouz, who joined Yisrael Beiteinu, says he will do the same after he finishes packing his office. Likud MK Avichai Boaron has given both men 24 hours to resign — or he will convene the faction and seek to have them formally declared “defectors.”
That is the comic detail. Everyone agrees they are leaving. The fight is over who gets to announce it, and which legal-political label will follow them out the door.
The procedural stakes are real. A voluntary resignation is a departure. Being declared a defector can mean losing access to party funding, political rights and the last scraps of respectability that Israeli politics still distributes on installment plans.
Edelstein and Erdan say they will not become the 61st vote for a narrow government, whoever leads it. Likud hears that as treason.
The new party calls it a refusal to serve either bloc. In an election season, every refusal to endorse Netanyahu becomes proof that you secretly work for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s lawyers have asked to cancel three hearing days in his October trial. The reason: the office’s annual vacation.
Israel’s constitutional crisis has many fronts. One of them is apparently a scheduling conflict.
#Israel #Likud #Netanyahu #Edelstein #Erdan #elections #fakeDemocracy
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Arabs Are Welcome. Their Parties Are Not.
Aliza Bloch joined Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein's new right-wing party and answered the question Israeli centrists have spent years avoiding: should Arab citizens have a place in government?
"Yes," she said. "There is room for everyone." Israel should stop building walls around the debate, she added, and Arab citizens "certainly" belong in an Israeli government.
Within hours the party issued a clarification on behalf of Erdan and Edelstein. It would never sit with Arab parties that support terrorism and refuse to call Hamas a terrorist organization.
There could be room for "Zionist Arabs" who love the country, support enlistment or national service, and accept Israel's Jewish identity. Ra'am and the Joint List were named as excluded.
Note what the clarification did not do. It did not contradict Bloch. She spoke about Arab citizens; Erdan and Edelstein spoke about Arab parties. Both statements can stand, which is exactly the point — the position was never that Arabs are unwelcome. It is that Arab citizens are welcome in government provided they do not arrive through the parties Arab citizens actually elect.
The conditions are worth reading closely, because they are not conditions of the same kind. Loving the country is rhetoric. Supporting enlistment is policy. Accepting Israel's Jewish identity is constitutional. An Arab politician can perform the first, negotiate the second, and lose his seat over the third.
The list is not a test that happens to be hard. It is a test written so that no elected Arab representative can pass it and keep the voters who elected him.
Ra'am sat in Naftali Bennett's coalition in 2021 — the first Arab party in an Israeli government. It held for a year. Since then the entire spectrum from Likud to Erdan's new slate has treated that year as a mistake rather than a precedent.
Bloch offered a broad coalition. The clarification supplied the gate and the checklist.
Arab citizens can join an Israeli government. The parties they vote for cannot.
#Israel #ArabCitizens #Erdan #Edelstein #elections #Raam #democracy
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Aliza Bloch joined Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein's new right-wing party and answered the question Israeli centrists have spent years avoiding: should Arab citizens have a place in government?
"Yes," she said. "There is room for everyone." Israel should stop building walls around the debate, she added, and Arab citizens "certainly" belong in an Israeli government.
Within hours the party issued a clarification on behalf of Erdan and Edelstein. It would never sit with Arab parties that support terrorism and refuse to call Hamas a terrorist organization.
There could be room for "Zionist Arabs" who love the country, support enlistment or national service, and accept Israel's Jewish identity. Ra'am and the Joint List were named as excluded.
Note what the clarification did not do. It did not contradict Bloch. She spoke about Arab citizens; Erdan and Edelstein spoke about Arab parties. Both statements can stand, which is exactly the point — the position was never that Arabs are unwelcome. It is that Arab citizens are welcome in government provided they do not arrive through the parties Arab citizens actually elect.
The conditions are worth reading closely, because they are not conditions of the same kind. Loving the country is rhetoric. Supporting enlistment is policy. Accepting Israel's Jewish identity is constitutional. An Arab politician can perform the first, negotiate the second, and lose his seat over the third.
The list is not a test that happens to be hard. It is a test written so that no elected Arab representative can pass it and keep the voters who elected him.
Ra'am sat in Naftali Bennett's coalition in 2021 — the first Arab party in an Israeli government. It held for a year. Since then the entire spectrum from Likud to Erdan's new slate has treated that year as a mistake rather than a precedent.
Bloch offered a broad coalition. The clarification supplied the gate and the checklist.
Arab citizens can join an Israeli government. The parties they vote for cannot.
#Israel #ArabCitizens #Erdan #Edelstein #elections #Raam #democracy
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