Benny Gantz announced on Monday that he will not run in Israel’s October 27 election, after opinion polls consistently showed his Blue and White party below the 3.25 percent threshold needed to win seats in the 120 seat Knesset. The 67 year old former army chief and defence minister said he would continue to work for unity, and was expected to hold a news conference later on Monday.
Gantz was once the main opposition alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He sat in a national unity government with Netanyahu from 2020 to 2021 and joined the war cabinet formed after the October 7, 2023 attacks, before quitting that cabinet in June 2024 saying Netanyahu was preventing progress toward true victory. His unity message in this campaign referred to a government of Zionist parties, which excludes the Arab led lists.
Opposition leaders including Gadi Eisenkot welcomed the decision as correct and responsible. Former ambassador Alon Pinkas told Al Jazeera the departure was electorally irrelevant and inconsequential, since Gantz was not going to clear the threshold and had lost much of his standing by staying in Netanyahu’s government. The practical effect is narrow but real: votes that would have been cast for a party below the threshold, and so discarded, are now free to move to the two blocs that are running neck and neck, with neither on track for a majority and the Arab led lists projected at 13 seats.