Hawkish ex-general Ofer Winter expected to launch new party next week, shaking up the right

Signs grew Wednesday that former military general Ofer Winter was gearing up to announce a new right-wing political party next week ahead of the October 27 Knesset election, adding to a growing list of non-aligned small parties that could make or break the vote’s outcome.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Winter — who has been the subject of controversy for a decade, and was released from the military in 2024 after being passed over for promotion — has long been reported to be mulling forming a party, and is reportedly targeting hawkish voters who are disappointed with the current government.

His party is reportedly set to consist of religious and secular candidates who are all new to politics and not “tainted” by the failures surrounding Hamas’s onslaught of October 7, 2023, or by the decades-old sweeping military exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men.

Billboards along Tel Aviv’s Ayalon Highway cryptically teased that Israelis would “soon have whom to vote for,” along with the date August 25. Associates of Winter quoted by Hebrew media confirmed that the hawkish ex-general is behind the signs, and that he is expected to announce the formation of a new party on August 25.

A short clip posted on Wednesday afternoon, reportedly issued by Winter, showed his silhouette walking into an auditorium, along with the same date and the name of a venue — Jerusalem’s Shalva Center.

Polls published this week saw a potential Winter-headed party failing to clear the 3.25% electoral threshold, while largely pulling support from Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party and potentially leaving both parties out of the Knesset and weakening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc. However, Winter could also potentially draw right-wing support from anti-Netanyahu opposition parties such as Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar and Avigdor Liberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beytenu.

Channel 12 quoted Winter associates as saying the ex-general told them, “I am in the right-wing bloc, I will support Netanyahu.”

But on Wednesday evening, the i24News outlet reported that Netanyahu has expressed distrust of Winter in closed forums, fearing he will team up with Eisenkot.

“I don’t trust Winter. He will either waste right-wing votes or take right-wing votes and hand them to a government headed by Eisenkot, together with [B’Yachad leader Naftali] Bennett and [Democrats leader Yair] Golan,” the outlet quoted the premier as saying.

The Walla news outlet, however, reported that Winter has said he is unwilling to make Eisenkot prime minister and wants as broad a right-wing government as possible.

Netanyahu has been reported to suspect that behind Winter’s moves is Liberman, a hawkish former Netanyahu ally who has become a bitter rival. Winter served briefly as Liberman’s military secretary in 2018 before the latter resigned as defense minister that year to protest a ceasefire in Gaza and the start of Qatari cash payments to Hamas.

The premier is expected to apply heavy pressure on Winter — and other right-wing parties with negligible chances of making it into the Knesset, such as Moshe Feiglin’s Zehut and Avi Maoz’s Noam — to merge with another party, chiefly Religious Zionism, to avoid competing with allies for the same pool of ballots.

But multiple reports have indicated that Winter isn’t interested in this, and the planned last-minute party launch — just two weeks before the September 8 deadline for parties to submit their candidate lists for the election — is apparently intended to minimize this pressure.

Winter has also reportedly been in contact with Gilad Erdan, head of the new Unity party — one of multiple moderate right-wing and centrist parties that, barring a merger, are mostly predicted to fail — but ruled out teaming up with him because Erdan isn’t new to politics, having been a longtime Likud MK before becoming ambassador to the UN in 2020-2024, as well as envoy to the US in 2021.

Meanwhile, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who has said he is meeting with multiple Israeli party leaders, met with Winter on Wednesday.

עוד לפני ההשקה הרשמית של המפלגה-
וינטר הוזמן לפגישה אצל השגריר האמריקני מייק האקבי. pic.twitter.com/MNY6hncdrc

— שירית אביטן כהן Shirit Avitan Cohen (@Shiritc) August 19, 2026

Channel 12 reported this week that Winter is in talks with right-wing Arab Israeli influencer Yoseph Haddad, who recently registered a party under the name Brave Israel, and Laly Derai, the mother of slain IDF soldier Staff Sgt. Saadia Derai, for them to join his party.

In a statement, Haddad told the network that he “is considering entering political life” and “will make a decision soon.” A spokesman for Winter merely said “patience,” while Derai denied any political involvement.

Officials from Netanyahu’s Likud party are leaning on the premier to thwart the plan by offering Haddad a reserved spot on the ruling party’s electoral slate, several Hebrew media reports said this week.

Winter came under criticism during the 2014 Gaza war, when he served as commander of the Givati Brigade, for a letter to his subordinate officers in which he described the operation as a religious war against a “blasphemous” foe.

The former Givati Brigade commander was also later accused of passing along sensitive information about the war effort to then-economy minister Bennett, bypassing the usual chain of command.

He was eventually denied a promotion to major general, angering many on the right, before being released from the army.