Winter vows to stay in race despite pressure campaign targeting his party

By Ariela Karmel

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Ariela Karmel is a political correspondent at The Times of Israel. She previously reported for Calcalist and Haaretz. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African History from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.

People of Israel party chairman Ofer Winter speaks at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, October 11, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Ofer Winter says his People of Israel party will remain in the October 27 election race despite a campaign urging its candidates to withdraw: “We will not give in,” the party leader says. “We will run to the finish with all our strength.”

People of Israel is the central target of an aggressive pressure campaign Likud and its allies have been waging against smaller right-wing parties to quit, fearing they could siphon votes from established parties and, if they fail to cross the electoral threshold, waste those votes and cost the Netanyahu-led bloc seats.

Winter’s party has hovered around the 3.25% electoral threshold in recent polls.

“In recent weeks, we have witnessed a coordinated campaign of smears, threats and vicious attacks,” Winter says in a statement to the press. He claims it is “funded with tens of millions of shekels from the state budget, all to hurt People of Israel.”

Winter says signs calling on candidates to quit were put up “on every corner” in the communities where they live, including Laly Derai’s West Bank settlement of Eli. Derai, the party’s No. 6 candidate, is the mother of an IDF soldier killed fighting in Gaza.

“What do these signs say? That good people, some of whom lost what was dearest to them for the country, or who served hundreds of days in reserve duty during the war, are ‘endangering the State of Israel,’” he says. “And why? Only because they exercised the most basic democratic right: the right to be elected.”

The campaign has already succeeded in getting Davidi Ben Zion, the party’s No. 8 candidate, to withdraw. Winter says Ben Zion told him that he and his wife “can no longer withstand this pressure.” He adds: “I embrace Davidi and his family, and respect his decision.”

The pressure campaign comes as polls consistently place Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc well short of the 61 seats needed to form a government.