Benny Gantz drops out of Israel’s election race

Benny Gantz, a former Israeli army chief and defence minister, has withdrawn from Israel’s election race after polls showed his party falling short of the threshold for entering parliament.

The leader of the Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) party announced on Monday he will not run in the October 27 polls, saying he will “continue to work for unity”.

The 67-year-old is expected to hold a news conference later on Monday.

Opinion polls in the lead-up to next week’s vote had consistently shown Gantz’s party hovering below the 3.25 percent threshold needed to enter the 120-seat Knesset, or Israel’s parliament.

A former main opposition leader, Gantz sat in a national unity government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from 2020 to 2021.

He also joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet that was formed to oversee Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip after the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Gantz quit the emergency cabinet in early June 2024, saying Netanyahu “is preventing us from advancing toward true victory”.

Reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said Gantz’s election withdrawal announcement “was not really expected”, but added that many would see it as being “in line with how he’s conducted himself” after entering politics in 2018.

“This is a man who entered into unity governments with leaders – especially Netanyahu – that he expressly opposed,” said Odeh.

Gantz’s message for unity is narrow, Odeh added, as it referred to “a unity government of Zionist parties, so no Palestinian Israeli parties, no non-Zionist parties in the government, even if that means bringing in Netanyahu again”.

‘Irrelevant and inconsequential’

Netanyahu’s Likud party and the far-right coalition it leads is locked in a tight race with a self-styled Zionist opposition alliance heading into the election, according to recent polling, although neither side appears on track to win a parliamentary majority.

Two Arab-led electoral lists representing the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 20 percent of the population, are projected to win 13 seats and could be critical to any post-election coalition – but both main blocs have ruled out forming a government with them.

Opposition leaders, including Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot, who is seen as a potential prime minister candidate, welcomed Gantz’s decision as “correct” and “responsible”.

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and consul general in New York, told Al Jazeera Gantz’s exit from the race does not change the playing field as he was not going to have a major impact on the election.

“Electorally, his departure from the political system is completely irrelevant and inconsequential,” he said. “In terms of the politics, it is also inconsequential,” adding that Gantz had lost “a lot of his aura” when he “overstayed his welcome in the Netanyahu government”.