Yesh Atid co-founder and MK Boaz Toporovsky steps away from Knesset

Yesh Atid MK Boaz Toporovsky announced Wednesday that he is stepping away from politics and will not seek another term in the Knesset.

In a statement, the lawmaker said that he is “taking a break from politics,” but will remain part of the party that he helped found with Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.

“Yesh Atid has been and will remain a home and a family for me,” he wrote, “where I grew as a public servant and worked for years, driven by a sense of mission and a desire to do good.”

“I am concluding my role in the Knesset with a sense of satisfaction from the public work, but also with a sense of missed opportunity,” he said, highlighting his efforts to improve road safety in Israel, an area where “much work is still needed.”

In a statement, Yesh Atid thanked Toporovsky for years of “meaningful, dedicated, and principled public service.”

“Boaz is one of Yesh Atid’s founders, a friend of mine, and he will continue to be part of our extended family,” Lapid said. “I thank him for his years of service to the Israeli public and wish him success in the next chapter of his journey.”

Toporovsky first served in the Knesset from 2013 to 2015 as part of Yesh Atid, but lost his seat in the 2015 elections. He re-entered the Knesset in 2019 and briefly served as coalition whip during the short-lived government led by Lapid and former prime minister Naftali Bennett in 2022.

After the announcement, Yesh Atid named former Zionist Council chief Oz Haim as Toporovsky’s replacement in the Knesset.

The council operates under the umbrella of the World Zionist Congress, which oversees major Zionist institutions, including the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael–Jewish National Fund, and allocates some $1 billion annually to Jewish causes worldwide.

Haim will serve as an MK for Yesh Atid after leading the Zionist Council of Israel for four and a half years.

His term will only last until the upcoming elections, which are required to take place before the end of October.

Ahead of the elections, Yesh Atid joined forces last month with Bennett’s party, creating the “Together – Led by Bennett” joint electoral slate.

Recent polling by The Times of Israel’s sister site, Zman Yisrael, shows the joint party winning 23 seats in the Knesset, second only to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, which is polling at 24 out of the possible 120.

An anti-Netanyahu, Zionist bloc led by Bennett would win 56 seats, short of the minimum 61 seats needed to form a coalition. A Netanyahu-led bloc would also be under the threshold, polling at 51 seats.