Disgruntled New Hope MK petitions High Court over stalled merger with Likud, says parties trying to deny her legal rights

Former deputy foreign minister and New Hope MK Sharren Haskel petitions the High Court of Justice to order Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope to formally complete their merger, arguing the parties have deliberately left the process unfinished to prevent her from splitting off as a one-member faction and taking with her the state funding attached to her Knesset seat.

Haskel, who entered the Knesset as part of Sa’ar’s New Hope party, opposed its March 2025 merger with Likud and has refused to run on the joint list.

While the two parties have since functioned as what she describes as “a single political entity,” with Sa’ar expected to secure a reserved spot on the Likud list and his lawmakers running in the party’s primaries, Haskel alleges that the parties have “deliberately refrained” from submitting the merger for formal approval by the Knesset House Committee to prevent her from leaving.

Under the law, an MK who opposes the merger of their party with another faction is entitled to break away as a one-member faction and keep the share of publicly funded state party financing tied to their Knesset seat.

The petition follows Haskel’s resignation last week from her position in government after the Knesset passed a law banning the arrests of Haredi draft dodgers. She has since announced the launch of her new political party, “Israel First,” following months of speculation over the possible formation of a new breakaway Likud party led by former Likud MK Yuli Edelstein and former minister Gilad Erdan.

The episode also marks the latest escalation in Haskel’s increasingly public rift with Sa’ar, following a widely circulated handwritten resignation note in which she accused the foreign minister of betrayal, writing: “You lied to me. You lied to the nation of Israel.”