Former IDF general Ofer Winter launched a new nationalist party, Amcha Yisrael, meaning people of Israel, in Jerusalem on Tuesday. He said anyone who thinks the public will accept everything remaining the same in the political sphere after 7 October is making a bitter mistake, and built the party's platform around integrating the ultra-Orthodox into the military, including Arab citizens who support the state, reforming the justice system, and addressing crime in Arab communities.
On Gaza, Winter went further than the platform's domestic planks, calling Palestinian emigration the only solution and saying Israel's enemies will pay a heavy territorial price. The slate he built around those positions mixes political recruitment with public grief and advocacy: Yosef Haddad, an Arab Israeli influencer, sits alongside bereaved mother Laly Derai, journalist Netali Shem Tov, October 7 widow Sigal Kraunik, Bar Association figure Eran Ben-Ari, and former deputy mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahum.
Netanyahu's response was not to argue with Winter's positions but to warn about arithmetic. He said right wing parties risk wasting votes if they fail to clear the 3.25 percent electoral threshold, a warning aimed at more than one new list but landed here directly on Amcha Yisrael. Polling suggests Winter's party could cross that threshold, and where it draws support from most is Religious Zionism, not the centre.
A right wing bloc that adds a party rather than consolidating one is either strength or risk depending entirely on whether that party clears 3.25 percent, and six weeks before an election is a short runway to find out. Netanyahu is treating the threshold itself as the campaign's real opponent on his side of the map, which is a different fight than the one Winter says he is running.