Netanyahu should resign, ‘he took Israel to the edge’: Union chief threatens to join protests, calls for elections

Arnon Bar-David, the head of the powerful Histadrut labor union, calls on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take responsibility for the failure to prevent the October 7 massacres and call elections by the end of the year, warning that the union could join anti-government protests.

The Netanyahu government “brought disaster upon Israel,” Hebrew media quotes Bar-David telling an event in the southern city of Beersheba.

“He took us to the edge, to a place we should not have been… We’re at a dead-end, and there’s only one way out: elections,” says Bar-David. “He should take responsibility for what happened, and then he should he decide for himself; if I was prime minister, I would resign.”

The union chief calls on Netanyahu to set a date for new elections, and warns that the union — which can shut down much of the economy — will join protests if Netanyahu tries to cling to power.

“The country cannot carry on like this… The State of Israel needs a restart,” he says, specifying that an agreed date for new elections should be set “for the end of the year, December — by then the war can be won.” It would be wrong to hold elections now, with the war continuing, and the dangers of escalation in the north, he says.

He adds: “We need to build something new. Everyone wants something new… for new people to enter politics… We can’t continue with the [current] 120 people in the Knesset… who do almost nothing for us.”

“We may have to take to the streets” to press for elections, he warns. “I hope that won’t be necessary.”

“And if the people [when they vote] want the same coalition… so be it. And if the people want change, there will be change.”

Even before the war, Israel had gone through “the worst year in its history, a year of polarization and divide and judicial revolution,” Bar-David says, referring to the coalition’s attempt to overhaul the judiciary. “And someone turned us into each other’s enemy, someone stirred up one sector against the other; the writing was on the wall.”

He denounces the pre-war focus on the judicial overhaul, when Israel should have focused on its external enemies.

Bar-David also appears to accuse Netanyahu of holding up a deal to free the hostages for political reasons.

“There is a deadline. We have to free the hostages and reach a deal, if it doesn’t happen because it doesn’t suit someone politically, then the government will fall apart,” Channel 12 quotes him as saying.

According to Ynet, Bar-David also told the gathering that he had spoken to Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and urged them to adapt the budget to wartime, including shuttering several largely superfluous government ministries.

However, Bar-David says they refused.