Knesset readies to welcome dozens of new faces at Tuesday’s swearing-in

The 120 members of the 26th Knesset are set to be sworn in at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, with many new faces expected to enter parliament for the first time.

Forty-six of the 120 future MKs will be new faces in the Knesset, including 15 out of the 21 seats allocated to Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party. The Knesset is also expected to include 33 women, up from 29 when the 25th Knesset was sworn in in 2022.

The oldest member of the incoming Knesset is Likud’s Haim Katz, who will turn 79 next month, while the youngest is the US-born Yonatan Shalev of B’Yachad, who at 24 will become the youngest-ever Israeli parliamentarian, breaking a record set by Moshe Nissim that has stood since 1959.

The longest-serving MK is Benjamin Netanyahu, who has served as a member of Knesset for 35 cumulative years since he was first elected in 1988.

On Monday, the new faces of the incoming Knesset members met at the parliament in Jerusalem for orientation a day ahead of them being sworn in.

Some of the more prominent faces amid the new crop of legislators include B’Yachad’s Noam Tibon, a retired IDF major general who launched a one-man mission on October 7, 2023, to rescue his son, Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon, and his son’s family from Kibbutz Nahal Oz; and Likud’s Elisha Madan, an IDF reservist who lost both legs in a 2024 blast while fighting in Gaza.

They also include Yisrael Beytenu’s Sharon Sharabi, whose brother Yossi Sharabi was kidnapped on October 7 and slain in captivity, and whose other brother, Eli Sharabi, was held captive for almost 500 days in Gaza after his wife and daughters were murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri; and Yashar’s Shira Shapiro, the mother of Staff Sgt. Aner Shapiro, an off-duty IDF officer who fended off multiple grenades in a roadside bomb shelter before he was killed.

Some of the more controversial new faces include Likud’s Jacob Bardugo, a longtime Netanyahu loyalist, right-wing radio host and commentator on the pro-government Channel 14, who is known for his coarse rhetoric and has been accused by other Likud MKs of blackmail; and Otzma Yehudit’s Chanamel Dorfman, a longtime aide to party chief Itamar Ben Gvir with a history of extremism linked to settler hilltop youth, who was in the past subject to several Shin Bet probes as well as administrative restraining orders from the IDF barring him from the West Bank.

Stav Levaton contributed to this report.