Gantz tells ToI he’ll halt his campaign if he doesn’t cross threshold in last week of race

Benny Gantz said on Friday that he would halt his election campaign if polls taken in the last week of the race show his Blue and White party failing to cross the electoral threshold and falling short of entering the Knesset.

“I only have the obligation to my voters themselves,” Gantz said on The Times of Israel’s Lazar Focus podcast. “And I can guarantee that their voice will not be thrown away because either I’ll go across the threshold or I won’t run in the last week or so. So no votes will be wasted.”

In the latest Zman Israel poll, Gantz’s party is polling at 2%, well below the 3.25% needed to enter the Knesset. Polls from Hebrew news outlets have likewise consistently shown his party falling far short of entering the Knesset.

Israel’s election will take place on October 27. Gantz is pitching his party as a unifier between the blocs supporting and opposing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I know I won’t be the next prime minister,” Gantz said on the podcast. “That’s fine. But we must make sure that we will become the bridge, that will bridge between those two sides of the political map and make sure that the majority of Zionist people are somehow working together towards the same goal that we all share.”

According to the Ynet news site, senior officials in opposition parties are pressuring Gantz to quit the race, viewing him as an obstacle to the bloc’s victory in the election.

Gantz was Netanyahu’s main rival in a series of elections in 2019 and 2020 before joining with the prime minister in a short-lived unity government. He also joined the prime minister’s government for several months following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, onslaught.

He has distanced himself from the rest of the opposition’s so-called “change bloc,” calling for a broad unity government. He hasn’t expressly stated that he won’t sit in a government led by Netanyahu, and has repeatedly criticized the idea of frontrunner Gadi Eisenkot, who leads the centrist opposition Yashar party, leading a narrow anti-Netanyahu coalition. Eisenkot was formerly the number-two lawmaker in Gantz’s party.

A senior official in the opposition bloc told Ynet, “Gantz is motivated by personal frustration at his political situation.”

“From his perspective, there is no problem with Netanyahu continuing to serve as the next prime minister,” the official asserted.

Speaking to The Times of Israel, Gantz blasted the idea that he was hurting the opposition: “About wasting votes, this is a bit of chutzpah, I would say. I don’t belong in the back pocket of anyone.”

Contrary to Gantz’s remarks to The Times of Israel, an associate of his insisted to Ynet that the politician would “run to the very end,” backing the Blue and White leader’s argument that his message of unity would result in a broad Zionist government.

In response to the Ynet report, the party said: “We will make sure that a narrow and extremist government is not established here that relies on the draft dodgers, and not one that relies on the votes of the Arab parties, because that is not ‘change’; it is more of the same thing, the same conception that is leading the people of Israel into the abyss and civil war.”