Gantz Withdraws From Israel Election Race Eight Days Before Vote

Benny Gantz said Monday that he will not run in Israel’s election on Oct. 27, pulling his Blue and White party out of the race eight days before voting, JFeed reported.

Gantz, a former defense minister and chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, has campaigned for a broad national unity government. Blue and White said he will keep working to bring one about.

Polls have shown Blue and White below the 3.25% threshold a party needs to enter the Knesset, with recent surveys putting it at about 2% or lower.

That outcome is the one Gantz had said would make him quit. He told The Times of Israel in September that he would leave the race during the final week if polling showed his party would not enter the Knesset, saying he would not let his supporters’ votes be wasted.

The announcement still marks a sharp turn. Only days ago, Gantz had insisted in public that he intended to keep running, and opposition leaders had been pressing him to withdraw, arguing that votes for a party below the threshold could weaken the broader bloc opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Political correspondent Moriah Asraf reported that the timing was tied to military voting. Ballot boxes are to be distributed to IDF bases on Tuesday, she wrote, and Gantz did not want soldiers to vote for a party that would not be running in the end.

His party has also lost ground through departures. Several former Blue and White lawmakers are now with the Yashar party led by Gadi Eisenkot, who once served as Gantz’s deputy in the military.

Eisenkot thanked Gantz for what he called the “correct and responsible decision to withdraw from the most consequential elections since the establishment of the State of Israel.”

Democrats leader Yair Golan also welcomed the move, and Yair Lapid called the decision responsible and the right thing to do.

Gantz was scheduled to hold a press conference on Monday evening to explain the withdrawal.