Davidi Ben Zion, the acting head of the Samaria Regional Council, dropped out of the race for Knesset on Tuesday, October 14, two weeks before Israel's October 27 election, according to The Times of Israel. Ben Zion, who ran at No. 8 on Ofer Winter's People of Israel slate, cited fear of wasted right-wing votes and what he described as an ugly pressure campaign aimed at his family.
His departure lays bare a wider fight inside the national camp: a struggle over right-wing votes that, this year, is being fought with billboards, harassment, and personal threats rather than ideas. For the residents of Samaria, the heart of the settlement enterprise, the sight of one of their own driven off a slate by intimidation is a bitter sign of the times.
Why Ben Zion left the People of Israel party
Ben Zion made the decision out of fear that the People of Israel party would not beat the electoral threshold, meaning its voters' ballots would be wasted, The Times of Israel reported. Polls have placed Winter's party on the verge of entering the Knesset, with some surveys showing it falling short. Ben Zion, at No. 8 on the list, had no realistic prospect of a seat himself.
He also faced a pressure campaign. According to Channel 12, pro-Netanyahu activists allegedly put up billboards near his home and at the bus stop his children use on their way to school. The billboards read: “Davidi, step down! Don't endanger the country.”
Ben Zion assured Winter in a phone call that his decision was based on what he felt was best for the voters, and not because another party had offered him any incentive, Channel 12 reported, citing unnamed sources in his orbit.
The Kan public broadcaster reported that Ben Zion told other members of his party he was stepping down because of the pressure, writing: “My wife and children before everything.”
In a message to an unnamed person, accompanied by a photo of a poster apparently displayed against him in the Elon Moreh settlement, he wrote: “My whole settlement is full. My wife is broken.”
The party's response: “Dear Davidi, we love you”
The People of Israel party lamented Ben Zion's departure in a statement and thanked him for joining the campaign.
“Dear Davidi, we love you. We feel bad about the pressures, the threats, and the harassment your children and family were made to endure from those who aren't ready for new, clean forces to enter Israeli politics. Not everyone can take the illegitimate and despicable pressures that you and your family faced.”
The statement is a window into a campaign that, by multiple accounts, has crossed lines that Israeli politics once respected. Families were once off limits. School bus stops were once off limits. Not anymore.
Netanyahu and Smotrich welcome the move
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly attacked Winter, congratulated Ben Zion on the decision, calling it “important” and telling Winter's other candidates to follow suit.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads the coalition's Religious Zionism Party, also congratulated Ben Zion on what he called a “courageous and not easy step of national responsibility.” Writing on X, Smotrich, whose own party is predicted to only just beat the threshold, called on Winter to “do the right, desired move in light of the polls,” which show him failing to enter the Knesset.
There is hard electoral math behind the appeals. In a system where every vote below the threshold evaporates, right-wing votes lost to a list that fails to cross it go nowhere. Smotrich's argument is strategic: consolidate the national camp, deny the left the arithmetic advantage. It is the same logic that has governed coalition politics on the right for decades, from the days of the national unity lists of the 1950s to the merger pressures of every campaign since.
But the method matters as much as the math. A candidate withdrawing after sober reflection is democracy at work. A candidate withdrawing because posters appeared at his children's bus stop is something else entirely, and Israelis of every stripe should say so plainly.
“An ugly campaign” from the right
Yosef Hadad, the No. 2 on the People of Israel slate, told Kan that the party is facing “an ugly campaign financed by enormous budgets, whose whole aim is to crush us as though we are the enemy.”
“And it is coming from the right, from what is called our home,” Hadad said.
He said those carrying out the campaign “use repulsive methods and not everyone is able to withstand them, especially when it comes to their own family.”
That a veteran of Israel's wars and a proud voice for the national camp describes his own side this way should worry anyone who cares about the health of the Israeli right. The right wins when it campaigns on security, on sovereignty, on Jerusalem, on the land of Israel. It does not win by making a council leader's wife, in his words, broken.
What this means for the October 27 election
With two weeks to go, the People of Israel party must now survive without a prominent Samaria figure on its slate, while Winter's rivals press his remaining candidates to quit. The race within the right has become as much about attrition as about ideology, and the foreign media that loves to portray Israeli democracy as fragile will happily recycle this episode as proof.
They should look closer. A system where candidates drop out, parties merge, and leaders appeal for unity is a system that is working, sometimes messily, to ensure the will of the national electorate is not wasted. The deeper question is whether that will can be expressed without campaigns that target children's bus stops. On that, the verdict of this election season is still open, and the people of Samaria deserve better than what was done this month to one of their own.
FAQ
Who is Davidi Ben Zion?
He is the acting head of the Samaria Regional Council, which includes settlements in the northern West Bank, and was a Knesset candidate at No. 8 on Ofer Winter's People of Israel slate.
When is the Israeli election?
Israel votes on October 27, 2026. Ben Zion withdrew on October 14, two weeks before the vote.
Why did Ben Zion withdraw?
He cited fear that the party would not pass the electoral threshold, wasting its voters' ballots, and said pressure on his family, including billboards near his children's school bus stop, drove the decision.