In latest blow to Gantz, MK Farkash-Hacohen resigns from Blue and White

Lawmaker Orit Farkash-Hacohen announced her resignation from MK Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party on Thursday afternoon, in the latest blow to the centrist opposition faction

According to a party spokesperson, Farkash-Hacohen, a longtime Gantz ally, will not give up her Knesset seat and will “act in coordination” with the party “so as not to give the coalition another vote.”

Farkash-Hacohen’s exit leaves Blue and White-National Unity with seven seats. Had she resigned from parliament, her seat would have been assigned to the next person on the party’s 2022 electoral list, Inbar Yehezkeli Blilious.

However, that would have created an opening for Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar to regain his Knesset seat under the so-called Norwegian Law, pushing out Yehezkeli Blilious and flipping her seat to his New Hope party.

The Norwegian Law allows ministers and deputy ministers from large factions to resign from the Knesset, with their seats then filled by other members of their parties. New Hope ran on a joint list with Gantz’s Blue and White in the last elections and the two parties are still legally considered one faction.

“She wanted to leave with [Gadi] Eisenkot but Matan Kahana jumped first and she didn’t want to let in someone from Saar’s party. Now she’s clearly had enough. Blue and White has totally broken down,” an opposition source who is not a member of the party told The Times of Israel.

Eisenkot, who was No. 2 in Blue and White, recently quit both the faction and Knesset, stating that while he and Gantz worked together for many years and respect each other, their differences eventually drove them apart politically.

“For many months now, I have been working in every way to organize and strengthen the bloc of Zionist, patriotic, liberal and statesmanlike parties, to present a governing alternative and bring about elections and victory, as soon as possible,” Eisenkot told reporters in Tel Aviv on July 1.

“My joint service and friendship with Benny Gantz goes back many years, but there are also differences of opinion,” he said at a press conference, asserting that his former party “needed a transparent and deep democratization process.”

National Unity, as Blue and White was previously known, announced in early June that it would hold leadership primaries, although these would not extend to choosing the party’s electoral slate.

The departure of Eisenkot, who said that it was necessary “to build a leadership alternative that would bring about victory in the next elections,” from Blue and White was quickly followed by that of MK Matan Kahana, who told The Times of Israel that he would try to broker a political alliance with former prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Following Eisenkot and Kahana’s resignations, the party changed its name from National Unity to Blue and White-National Unity.

In a statement on her resignation from Blue and White carried by Hebrew media, Farkash-Hacohen said that “in light of the fateful challenges facing the country, she wishes to join and assist Gadi Eisenkot.”

She added that she was leaving the exact date of her departure from the party up to Gantz “in order to ensure that the opposition is not harmed.”

“I want to emphasize that I was very sorry about the resignation of my friends Gadi Eisenkot and Matan Kahana, whom I greatly respect and appreciate, and I hope our paths will cross again in the future,” she wrote at the time.

Farkash-Hacohen did not respond to a request for comment on her decision to resign. In the wake of Eisenkot’s and Kahana’s departures, she posted on X that she was “staying with National Unity, led by Benny Gantz, and I believe in our path.”