Rebel Likud MK Dan Illouz joins Yisrael Beytenu, touts its ‘national and liberal values’
Liberman welcomes ‘principled’ right-wing ideologue who resigned from ruling party last month over its push to grant draft exemptions to ultra-Orthodox men
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam 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"
Freshman Likud MK Dan Illouz, who resigned from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party last month, will run in the upcoming election with Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu opposition party, he announced on Wednesday.
The Canadian-born attorney previously served as a Jerusalem City Councillor before entering the Knesset in 2023, where he made a name for himself as a right-wing ideologue and fierce opponent to granting military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox.
In a statement, Illouz said that he was joining Yisrael Beytenu “because it is the party that today represents the national and liberal values in which I believe.”
Welcoming Illouz to his party, Liberman called him “a principled person who throughout his public career has demonstrated courage, integrity and a willingness to pay a personal price to stand up for his principles.”
Illouz announced last month that he would not stand in the Likud primary ahead of the October 27 election, saying the party had “been hijacked” to please ultra-Orthodox allies.
He had, at any rate, been unlikely to make it into the Knesset with Likud in the coming election, as he had previously been granted a spot on the slate that is reserved for new immigrants.
A leaked screenshot obtained by Channel 12 showed that Illouz was booted from the Likud WhatsApp chat on Wednesday by coalition chair Ofir Katz following his defection to Yisrael Beytenu.
“Farewell to the populist who forgot who brought him into the Knesset,” Katz wrote in the chat. “He was never even Likud.”
אחרי שעבר לליברמן – בקבוצת הוואטסאפ של הליכוד הסירו את דן אילוז: "להתראות לפופוליסט"@amit_segal pic.twitter.com/3KSt4su5Nf
— החדשות – N12 (@N12News) August 5, 2026
Illouz had increasingly become a thorn in Likud’s side in recent months, due to his opposition to coalition efforts to exempt ultra-Orthodox men from mandatory military conscription.
After Netanyahu fired his then-defense minister Yoav Gallant in 2024 over the issue, Illouz, along with fellow former Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, became the party’s sole holdouts against what they saw as the government’s near-complete surrender to its Haredi partners.
Once Gallant had been axed, the party came after Illouz over his stance on the issue, stripping him of committee assignments, barring him from submitting private legislation for weeks and increasingly marginalizing him inside the party.
A committed right-wing ideologue, Illouz backs West Bank annexation, spearheaded a controversial law that earned international ire for barring UNRWA from operating inside Israel and sharply restricting its activities in the West Bank and Gaza, and pushed another law prohibiting the establishment of diplomatic missions in Jerusalem that are not embassies, aimed at entrenching Israel’s claim over the city.
Illouz also opposed hostage deals to free Israelis held in Gaza in exchange for ending the war against Hamas.
However, while his new party has been strongly against the Netanyahu government’s efforts to curtail the power of the judiciary and independent watchdogs, Illouz himself has been broadly supportive of such efforts, including advancing legislation to bring a unit that probes alleged police wrongdoing under the full, direct control of Justice Minister Yariv Levin. (A similar bill, sponsored by another Likud MK, was passed in June.)
Ahead of the 2022 election, Illouz told The Times of Israel that he believed Israel needed to undergo a series of changes to remove the Supreme Court’s ability to act as a check on the Knesset, while giving the Knesset the right to approve or deny new candidates for the bench, and also giving the Knesset the power to act as a check on government power. “Judicial review right now is not justified in Israel because we don’t have a constitution. I think it shouldn’t happen at all,” he said.
Despite supporting the government’s agenda, he has also criticized its approach to achieving these goals, stating in 2023 that the coalition needed “to embrace” Israelis who are against a key judicial overhaul measure, “not stick fingers in their eyes.”
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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