Yisrael Beytenu rebel announces formation of new party

An independent lawmaker who broke with the Yisrael Beytenu party in 2016 over its joining the governing coalition announced Tuesday she would form a new party.

“My assistants will leave the office tomorrow and go to submit the binder of the [party’s] founders to the population registry,” MK Orly Levy-Abekasis told a conference in Sderot.

With talk of elections in the air as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is beset by legal woes and the coalition wrangles over legislation exempting ultra-Orthodox students from military service, Levy-Abekasis warned political leaders that her party would pose a threat.

“I recommend to the party leaders not to fear elections but to fear the new party that was founded,” she said.

Knesset protocol says that leaving a party prohibits an incumbent MK from running on any already existing slate in the next election, meaning if Levy-Abekasis wanted another term in office she needed to form a new party.

Elections are currently scheduled for November 2019, but talk of a much-earlier vote has run rampant in recent days amid a simmering coalition crisis over ultra-Orthodox military conscription.

Levy-Abekasis announced in May 2016 that she would leave Yisrael Beytenu over its agreement to enter into the Likud-led government, saying that the party had abandoned its social platform during negotiations to enter the coalition.

She first said last year she was considering forming a party for the next elections.

The daughter of former foreign minister David Levy, Levy-Abekasis was a model and television presenter prior to entering the Knesset in 2009.