{"id":526449,"date":"2026-07-05T14:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T14:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/526449\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T14:17:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T14:17:17","slug":"edelstein-i-left-likud-because-i-couldnt-defend-its-agenda-seeks-broad-coalition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/526449\/","title":{"rendered":"Edelstein: I left Likud because I couldn’t defend its agenda; seeks ‘broad’ coalition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senior lawmaker Yuli Edelstein explained his decision to depart<\/a> Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party in an interview aired Saturday, a day after he made public his decision to leave, saying that he could no longer campaign for a party that continues to back draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men, as doing so would be a betrayal of his principles.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you succeed in the primaries, you then have to stand on the stage and say, \u2018Vote Likud, we will\u2026,\u2019 and I don\u2019t know how to finish that sentence,\u201d Edelstein said in an interview with Channel 12\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat will we do? Continue to allow freeloading?\u201d he questioned, in apparent reference to the government\u2019s failure to fulfill its obligation to draft members of the ultra-Orthodox public into the army.<\/p>\n

Short clips of Edelstein\u2019s interview were aired on Friday, in which he announced that he would not run in the Likud primaries ahead of elections later this year. Instead, he said, he would be forging \u201ca new political path.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Likud primaries are scheduled for August 4, ahead of the national election, which must take place no later than October 27, 2026.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere are members who, right now, are surprised to hear what I\u2019m saying,\u201d Edelstein said of his decision not to run in the primaries. \u201cThey\u2019ll say: \u2018Yuli, what are you doing? We\u2019ve supported him for decades, we would have supported him this time around, too \u2014 why is he doing this?’\u201d<\/p>\n

Apologizing to these Likud voters, Edelstein said: \u201cThere is no other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to make a change in this country\u2026 the State of Israel has always come before my party.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tMK Yuli Edelstein attends a House committee meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem on August 4, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

Looking to the future, the longtime lawmaker said he intends to establish a new political framework rather than join an existing party, although he declined to name it yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a fairly large public that is hungry for this message. The public has shifted right \u2013 you see it in all the polls,\u201d he said, arguing that many right-wing voters are seeking a \u201cresponsible right\u201d that would advance ultra-Orthodox conscription, judicial reform, and better address the security needs of Israel\u2019s north and south.<\/p>\n

Edelstein explained that he is seeking a \u201cbroad Zionist government\u201d that is \u201cnot dependent on non-Zionist factions,\u201d including Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties, adding that he would even be willing to take the \u201ctenth spot\u201d on a joint electoral list if it prevented the center-right vote from splintering.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, attends a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting alongside Likud MK Yuli Edelstein at the Knesset on June 13, 2023. (Oren Ben Hakoon\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

Edelstein, who has been a party mainstay since 2003, once enjoyed firm support within the Likud, even winning the party\u2019s 2019 primary, placing him second only to Netanyahu on the Likud\u2019s electoral slate ahead of that year\u2019s March election, which was the first of five that Israel had between 2019 and 2022.<\/p>\n

In 2021, when the Likud was briefly out of power, Edelstein announced he would challenge Netanyahu for the party leadership, but ultimately withdrew the bid. When the Likud next held primaries ahead of Israel\u2019s most recent election, in late 2022, Edelstein dropped from second to 18th place on the party\u2019s electoral slate.<\/p>\n

Lapid: Bennett is better suited to lead than me at present<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid also appeared in an interview on Channel 12\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d aired Saturday, during which he assailed Netanyahu\u2019s handling of the war with Iran, and defended his decision to take second place behind former prime minister Naftali Bennett on their joint slate, Together, in the upcoming election.<\/p>\n

The Yesh Atid leader said that had he been calling the shots during the war with Iran, \u201cI would\u00a0have bombed all the main energy installations, all the oil fields,\u201d arguing that the government had made a mistake in refraining from such attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to topple the Iranian government, you need to take out the Iranian economy, and afterwards the next [Iranian] government would need to build it again from scratch over years,\u201d Lapid continued, adding that he expressed this opinion to Netanyahu during security briefings he received as opposition leader during the war.<\/p>\n

Lapid said that Netanyahu merely \u201cmumbled\u201d in response.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tOpposition Leader Yair Lapid attends the Herzliya conference at the Reichman University, July 1, 2026. (Avshalom Sassoni\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

Turning to politics and his union with Bennett, Lapid said that Bennett is more suited to lead the country at this moment than he is, because, he ventured,\u00a0Israel needs a right-wing leader at the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaftali Bennett is the right person at the right time,\u201d said Lapid, insisting that this was not a dig at Together\u2019s main rival in the opposition camp, Gadi Eisenkot\u2019s centrist Yashar party.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying he\u2019s better or more fitting than Gadi Eisenkot, I\u2019m saying he\u2019s better and more fitting than me at this moment,\u201d he clarified.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cWe need right now a leader from the right. I need someone who was prime minister, who was defense minister, who was education minister, who was economy minister, who established a government, who dismantled a government, who lost, not just who won, and he is a person of the right\u2026 I put myself, my party, and my trust behind him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tFormer prime minister Naftali Bennett at the Herzliya Conference at Reichman University in Herzliya, July 1, 2026. (Avshalom Sassoni\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

Recent polling has shown that Eisenkot\u2019s Yashar party is pushing past the Bennett-Lapid union towards the forefront of the anti-Netanyahu movement. A Channel 12 poll<\/a> last week placed Likud at 24 seats, still the largest party, with Eisenkot at 22 and Bennett at 17.<\/p>\n

That poll put the Zionist anti-Netanyahu bloc at 58 seats total, beating out the current coalition\u2019s projected 52 seats. Neither the Zionist opposition or coalition are projected to win the 61 seats needed to form a government.<\/p>\n

When polled about who they would prefer as prime minister, the most popular contender against Netanyahu is Eisenkot, as opposed to Bennett or Liberman.<\/p>\n

When up against Eisenkot, Netanyahu polls at 37% support against Eisenkot\u2019s 36%. Netanyahu is preferred by 40% of those surveyed when placed against either Bennett or Liberman, who poll at 32% and 23%, respectively.<\/p>\n

Stav Levaton contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior lawmaker Yuli Edelstein explained his decision to depart Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party in an interview…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[147752,49,85,46,954,21141,953,43,19344,62373],"class_list":["post-526449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-2026-israeli-elections","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israeli-politics","tag-likud","tag-naftali-bennett","tag-news","tag-yair-lapid","tag-yuli-edelstein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}