Benjamin Netanyahu will seek re-election this year, the Likud party announced today.
This follows statements by U.S. President Donald Trump that he is unsure whether the Israeli prime minister will run again.
In a brief statement, Likud said Netanyahu will run in the election and, God willing, will win. At present, no elections have been officially called in Israel, but they should be held by October.
Earlier, the chief Washington correspondent for the ABC television network, Jonathan Karl, posted on X that Trump told him he did not know whether Netanyahu would run in the election. “I don’t know, he’s had an amazing career. He wants to continue,” the US president commented.
This year’s elections in Israel will be the first held in the country since the unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, considered Israel’s worst security blunder. In response, the Israeli military launched a wide-ranging operation against the Gaza Strip.
Polls indicate that the ruling coalition will fail to garner a majority in the next election. A poll published yesterday (Tuesday) by the Jerusalem-based think tank Israel Democracy Institute said 61% of Israelis believe Netanyahu should not be a candidate.
But polls suggest that even a potential coalition of opposition parties would fail to win a majority of seats in parliament unless it formed a coalition with Arab parties, something that opposition party leaders have already rejected.
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