Gantz boots rebel MK Asaf Zamir from party list for 2021 election

Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz tells MK Asaf Zamir that he will not be included on the party’s electoral list for the March 2021 election due to his decision to vote against extending the budget deadline last week ultimately causing the fall of the government, Zamir says.

“I do not regret the way I voted,” Zamir writes on Facebook.

“I thanked him for the trust he has placed in me so far and I begged him to do everything necessary so that the center-left arrives united to the elections in a structure that will allow him to run for power,” he says.

Blue and White MK Asaf Zamir at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, May 21, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Gant’z office says the decision was “mutual” and that the defense minister “wished him well going forward”

Zamir, who resigned as minister in October, citing the passage of controversial legislation to restrict protests during the coronavirus lockdowns, was one of three Blue and White MKs to vote against the move, explaining “this was a bad government for Israel.”