Of all the numerous new political groupings to have emerged as the election campaign gathers pace, former general Ofer Winter’s People of Israel party, launched on Tuesday night, is the one that has Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu most worried.
The Likud leader routinely traduces his opponents as dangerous leftists, but that won’t work with Winter, who has for years been what might best be termed a conditional ally of Netanyahu’s. (The prime minister reportedly consulted with him in the early months of the post-October 7 war in Gaza.)
Although Yair Netanyahu indeed rushed to characterize him as a servant of the left, Winter is a religious rightist to his soul, who told the officers in the Givati Brigade he commanded that 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza was a religious war against a “blasphemous” enemy, who adamantly opposes Palestinian statehood, and who unabashedly declared in Tuesday’s opening campaign speech that the only solution in Gaza is “emigration.”
Winter vowed in that speech to “do everything to establish as broad a right-wing government as possible, with as many Zionist partners as possible” — phrasing that echoed Netanyahu’s reiterated pledge this week to form a “broad national government,” and that might therefore be considered music to the prime minister’s ears.
