Edelstein privately says Netanyahu ‘made every mistake possible’ — report

Former health minister Yuli Edelstein, a senior Likud party member, has reportedly been attacking former prime minister Benjmain Netanyahu, saying he needs to be replaced for having made mistakes that cost the party its rule over the country.

Edelstein, told associates in private conversations that many in the party agree with him that it is time for change, Kan news reports.

“He [Netanyahu] made every mistake possible,” Edelstein reportedly said of Netanyahu’s strategy following inconclusive March elections. Though Likud was the largest party, Netanyahu failed to build a majority coalition, a feat eventually achieved by then opposition leader and now Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

Though Netanyahu had separately offered Naftali Bennett, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, and New Hope party leader Gideon Sa’ar to rotate the premier’s seat with him in a coalition, he refused to step aside and let any other Likud party member be prime minister in his stead. Such a move was seen as a possible path to securing Bennett and Sa’ar’s entry into a coalition with Likud.

Then-health minister Yuli Edelstein, at the annual Jerusalem Conference of the ‘Besheva’ group in Jerusalem, on March 15, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“Why did he agree to give Gideon [Sa’ar], Bennett, Gantz, and everyone the prime ministership, but not give it to anyone from Likud?” Edelstein is said to have asked rhetorically. “Why did the Likud need to lose the government?”

Edelstein said that in the course of a few weeks, people “will notice that he [Netanyahu] is not prime minister and the penny will drop, and then they will tell him the truth to his face.”

Edstein also reportedly said that his own bid for party leadership has been well received and that “wherever I go, people say the time has come to switch Netanyahu. I don’t intend to be second in the [party] slate, I intend to win.”