JERUSALEM (The Thursday Times) — Yair Golan, the leader of Israel’s Democrats, said on Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sudden appeal for a national unity government was “political panic”, and that he could have no place in the next government, hours after President Isaac Herzog said he would ask Gadi Eisenkot to form it.
“Someone who for years nurtured Hamas rule himself, turned his office into a conduit for Qatari interests, torpedoed a state commission of inquiry, strengthened Iran’s position and brought Israel to a state of security and international emergency cannot be part of fixing Israel,” Golan wrote on X.
“Netanyahu understands that this time he is out. He sees the change government taking shape, and he is afraid,” he wrote. “After years of inciting, dividing, pitting people against one another and trying to delegitimise the change bloc, he suddenly remembers unity. This is political panic.”
Golan promised a government that would “dismantle Hamas rule, restore security to Israel’s citizens, strengthen democracy, investigate the worst disaster in the country’s history and begin to repair everything Netanyahu has destroyed”. “We will not let him sabotage this opportunity too,” he wrote.
What he was answering: in a video statement earlier on Saturday, Netanyahu said a government formed by Eisenkot with the support of Arab parties would destroy Israel from within, and called for a national unity government that would include Likud’s ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox partners. Eisenkot’s Yashar party also dismissed the appeal as hypocrisy.
Golan’s reference to Qatar points to a police investigation into allegations that aides in Netanyahu’s office worked on behalf of Qatar, which Netanyahu has called a political witch hunt. The state commission of inquiry is the independent investigation into the October 7, 2023 attack that Netanyahu’s government has refused to set up.
A retired general and former deputy army chief, Golan leads the Democrats, formed from the merger of Labour and Meretz. His party recommended Eisenkot to Herzog, and he is the only Jewish opposition leader who has openly backed relying on the Arab parties to form a government, which others in the bloc, such as Avigdor Liberman, have ruled out.
