Kahana announces resignation from Gantz’s National Unity party, day after Eisenkot says he’s leaving faction

By Sam Sokol 1 July 2025, 12:14 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

MK Matan Kahana attends a plenary session at the Knesset on May 7, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

National Unity MK Matan Kahana announces his resignation from Benny Gantz’s National Unity party, less than a day after fellow MK Gadi Eisenkot announced his imminent departure from the faction and the Knesset.

“MK Matan Kahana has informed National Unity chairman Benny Gantz that he intends to leave the party and the Knesset. Gantz thanked Kahana for his partnership and decency and wished him success,” the party says in a statement.

Kahana represented the right wing of Gantz’s center-right party.

According to national broadcaster Kan, Kahana has met multiple times with former prime minister Naftali Bennett, on whose advice he reportedly resigned from Gantz’s party.

This has sparked speculation that Kahana, a close confidant of Bennett and a former member of his now-defunct Yamina party, will join the former prime minister’s recently registered party.

Bennett has been out of office since the 2022 collapse of his diverse coalition government, which in 2021 ousted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the premiership after 12 consecutive years during which Israel underwent unprecedented political turmoil, including four national elections in three years.

His newly established Bennett 2026 party does not have a Knesset list yet but does have a platform, which is focused on strengthening Israeli security and integrating the ultra-Orthodox into the military and workforce.

Yesterday evening, Eisenkot, National Unity’s No. 2, informed Gantz that he was set to leave and would “return his mandate to the party” by resigning from the Knesset, with the apparent intention of finding a new political home ahead of the next national election.

Sources close to Eisenkot were quoted in Hebrew-language media reports as saying that the party leadership primaries proposed by Gantz were not sufficient to keep Eisenskot in the fold, and that though he has good personal ties with the National Unity leader, remaining in the party “would not allow him to realize his ideas and ideology.”

Citing unnamed political sources, Ynet reported that Yesh Atid party chair Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, is looking to offer Eisenkot the leadership of his party for the next election.