Erdan and Edelstein Launched a Party With Four Principles, No Name and No Slate

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN from 2020 to 2024, announced the formation of a new right-wing party under his leadership at a Tel Aviv press conference on Thursday 6 August, joined by Yuli Edelstein, Knesset Speaker from 2013 to 2020 and chair of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee until 2025. The platform as stated: universal conscription legislation, a “broad Zionist government,” a refusal to sit in a narrow government, and — per Haaretz — a “national” probe into the October 7 failures. “The law will establish a simple principle: In the State of Israel, every citizen has rights and also duties,” Erdan said, per the Times of Israel liveblog. “Every citizen will serve in the military or national service.” The party has no name. Ynet reported on 2 August that Erdan had held talks with former Beit Shemesh mayor Aliza Bloch, reserve Col. Hezi Nechama and Olympic judo medallist Oren Smadga; the slate is not settled.

Erdan spent the launch defining the party by what it is not. “My entire life, I have been a right-winger. I never zig-zagged,” he told Israel National News. “I believe in the land of Israel, in settlement, and in governance, and I fiercely oppose the creation of a Palestinian state.” On tone: “I vehemently oppose the left’s views. But I never hated those who thought differently from me... Our enemies are in Tehran, Gaza, and Lebanon.” Asked by The Jerusalem Post whether he could partner with Gadi Eisenkot or Naftali Bennett, he said: “We’re not against anyone. It depends on what principles they believe in.” The one flat exclusion came not from him but from Bloomberg, which reported the pair launched “pledging not to sit in a future government with representatives of the ultra-Orthodox.” Edelstein resigned from Likud last month after the conscription bill presented by his Netanyahu-aligned successor Boaz Bismuth included wide-ranging yeshiva exemptions and a freeze on prosecuting draft evaders.

Assessment: The interesting divergence is not the Jerusalem Post’s date error — its copy says Tuesday, against Thursday everywhere else — but which outlet carried the binding commitment. Erdan’s own language keeps every door open, including to Eisenkot and Bennett; the Haredi exclusion appears in a Bloomberg summary, not in a quoted line. That asymmetry is how a coalition veto becomes deniable in September. Watch also for a correction that never comes: Ynet had Edelstein simultaneously talking to Benny Gantz inside Ayelet Shaked’s merger effort, and nobody has said on the record that the thread is dead. A party with four principles and no name is a bargaining position before it is a list.