Roi Idan, a writer and content creator who served on the strategy team of Ofer Winter’s Amcha Yisrael party in the last election, has called on the right to accept that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must step aside if he is the obstacle to forming a Zionist unity government.
“Friends, I know this will be hard for you to hear, but given the situation we’re in right now, if what stands between us and a Zionist unity government is Netanyahu, then Netanyahu has to go,” Idan wrote on social media.
Idan, who regularly voices right-wing positions online, argued that Netanyahu’s time has run out. “Whatever he hasn’t done as prime minister by now, he’s not going to do. And on top of that, he’s a very problematic brand both here and abroad,” he wrote. “I know, it’s not fair. But the bitter truth is that there’s nothing more important right now than a stable government with some kind of shared Zionist denominator. Even if it means the prime minister is Eli Cohen.”
He added that he does not see how another election would significantly improve the situation for Netanyahu or the right, especially if Netanyahu is not heading the transition government. If anything, Idan wrote, the beneficiary would be a centrist “third bloc” along the lines of Benny Gantz and Yoaz Hendel.
Idan expanded on his position in an op-ed published Friday in Arutz Sheva, arguing that once a unity government is sworn in, even if it falls soon afterward and the Knesset is dissolved, its leader rather than Netanyahu would serve as transition prime minister heading into the next election.
His comments add to a growing number of voices on the right calling for a broad Zionist government after the October 27 election left neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor the opposition with a Knesset majority without the support of the Arab parties.
