The Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday evening approved a bill aimed at hampering former prime minister Naftali Bennett from running in the next election. Bennett is widely viewed as the strongest potential challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While the committee approved the motion, it held off on another controversial piece of legislation that would allow lawmakers to halt Netanyahu’s ongoing criminal trial.

The legislation aimed at Bennett, sponsored by Likud MK Avichai Boaron, would require any new party established by a chairman whose previous party dissolved within the past seven years to assume responsibility for paying off that party’s outstanding debts before being able to use campaign funds raised for his new party to finance its electoral campaign.

According to the bill’s explanatory notes, it would only apply to debts “that the State Comptroller found were created due to improper conduct.”

The bill does not stop Bennett from running, but it prevents him from using campaign money for the new party until the old party’s debts are paid off.

Ahead of Sunday evening’s committee vote, Bennett slammed the bill in a post on X, writing that “only a failed regime that is preoccupied with personal and political survival would be afraid to confront me. Therefore, it is trying to pass an anti-democratic and personal law designed to stop me from running.”

“The law is unconstitutional and will be invalidated immediately,” he wrote.

Approval by the committee means the government officially supports a bill and will back it in the Knesset, where it would need to pass an initial vote and three additional readings before becoming law.

Bennett, who led the now-defunct right-wing Yamina party, has been out of office since the 2022 collapse of his diverse governing coalition, which in 2021 ousted Netanyahu from the premiership following a period of political turmoil that saw four national elections in three years.

According to the Kan public broadcaster, Yamina has NIS 17 million ($5 million) in debts, while another........

© The Times of Israel