Ex-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen said considering forming new party before next election
Cohen reportedly received offers to join existing factions but is inclined to go his own way; ex-PM Bennett, ahead in polls, completes registration for new party

Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen is considering creating a new political party to run for Knesset in the next general election, Hebrew media reported Saturday.
The unsourced Channel 12 report said that though Cohen has received offers to join existing parties, he is leaning toward forming a new political faction.
Cohen has long been linked to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who appointed him as Mossad head after he had served as the premier’s national security adviser, and reportedly has viewed him and fellow longtime confidant Ron Dermer as his potential successors.
The report came as Netanyahu’s coalition underwent a rocky week, with Haredi parties threatening to bolt the government and send the country to early elections over its failure to pass a law exempting yeshiva students from military conscription.
After months of speculation that he would form a new right-wing party last year, Cohen decided not to enter politics, instead extending his contract for two more years as a director of Israel operations at SoftBank, a leading Japanese holding firm that primarily invests in companies operating in the technology, energy, and financial sectors.
Cohen had previously discussed forming alliances with former prime minister Naftali Bennett, Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman, and Netanyahu himself, Channel 12 reported.

The report said, however, that Cohen was now leaning toward forming his own party, as he believes Israel needs political change and that he would bring something new to the table.
In June 2024, amid speculation over his potential entrance into politics, polling found that a right-wing alliance of Liberman, Bennett, New Hope head Gideon Sa’ar, and Cohen would be the largest faction in the Knesset if elections were held, winning 25 seats.
Meanwhile, Bennett’s temporarily named “Bennett 2026” political party has completed the official registration process, allowing the former prime minister to run without having to pay off the debts of his old Yamina party, Kan reported on Sunday.
Bennett’s party is currently polling ahead of Likud, despite having no members announced beyond Bennett himself.
Responding to the Kan report, Social Equality Minister May Golan of Likud accused Bennett of having stolen the votes of right-wing voters when he, as prime minister, formed a broad coalition, and claimed that he was only running for office in order to access taxpayer money to pay for “another renovation in the basement of the villa in Ra’anana.”
In 2022, then-prime minister Bennett’s office rejected a media report that alleged extravagant spending at his Ra’anana home, saying its expenses were far lower than those of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Bennett, who led the now-defunct right-wing Yamina party, has been out of office since the 2022 collapse of his diverse coalition government, which in 2021 ousted Netanyahu from the premiership after 12 consecutive years, following a period of political turmoil that saw four national elections held in three years.
A Channel 12 poll published last week found that if elections were to be held today, an anti-Netanyahu bloc of parties led by Bennett and his newly registered party would win 72 Knesset seats.
The Times of Israel Community.