Senior lawmaker Yuli Edelstein explained his decision to depart Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party in an interview aired Saturday, a day after he made public his decision to leave, saying that he could no longer campaign for a party that continues to back draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men, as doing so would be a betrayal of his principles.

“If you succeed in the primaries, you then have to stand on the stage and say, ‘Vote Likud, we will…,’ and I don’t know how to finish that sentence,” Edelstein said in an interview with Channel 12’s “Meet the Press.”

“What will we do? Continue to allow freeloading?” he questioned, in apparent reference to the government’s failure to fulfill its obligation to draft members of the ultra-Orthodox public into the army.

Short clips of Edelstein’s interview were aired on Friday, in which he announced that he would not run in the Likud primaries ahead of elections later this year. Instead, he said, he would be forging “a new political path.”

The Likud primaries are scheduled for August 4, ahead of the national election, which must take place no later than October 27, 2026.

“There are members who, right now, are surprised to hear what I’m saying,” Edelstein said of his decision not to run in the primaries. “They’ll say: ‘Yuli, what are you doing? We’ve supported him for decades, we would have supported him this time around, too — why is he doing this?'”

Apologizing to these Likud voters, Edelstein said “there is no other way.”

“We need to make a change in this country… the State of Israel has always come before my party.”

Looking to the future, the longtime lawmaker said he intends to establish a new political framework rather than join an existing party, although he declined to name it yet.

“There is a fairly large public that is hungry for this message. The public has shifted right – you see it in all the polls,” he said, arguing that many right-wing voters are seeking a “responsible right” that would advance ultra-Orthodox conscription, judicial........

© The Times of Israel