Israeli breakaway party eyes PM Netanyahu voters over draft impasse

JERUSALEM – Two defectors from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud formed a new party that opposes exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service, a move that risks undermining the reelection bid of the country’s longest-serving leader.

Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein, both former Likud Cabinet ministers, launched the yet-unnamed party on Aug 6 pledging not to sit in a future government with representatives of the ultra-Orthodox.

That could draw voters away from Netanyahu, whose dependence on those parties as coalition allies has enabled them to keep hold of conscription waivers even as Israel wages war on several fronts.

In a speech, Edelstein said the new party’s call for an equitable conscription law aimed “not to lash out at the ultra-Orthodox but to fulfill a sense of deep responsibility toward the soldiers of the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defence Forces.

Erdan said Likud’s leaders no longer represent Likud voters, “whom I love so dearly.”

A Channel 13 television poll on Aug 5 predicted that the Erdan-Edelstein party wouldn’t perform well enough in the Oct 27 election to make it into Israel’s next Parliament, but the votes they attract could contribute to Likud winning only 20 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, compared with 22 in the absence of the breakaway party.

In that scenario, the poll puts Netanyahu behind his top challenger, centrist ex-general Gadi Eisenkot, whose Yashar party would take 23 seats.

The poll has Netanyahu and his allies commanding 49 seats, compared with 56 for Eisenkot’s alliance, though would fall short of the parliamentary majority needed to build a stable coalition. BLOOMBERG