Yossi Schwartz, ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 12.11.2026
Who is the new chair of the Zionist Parliament?
The Eisenkot Block succeeded in selecting the chair of the Knesset and the composition of the Organizing Committee at the suggestion of its new chairman, Roy Folkman of Eisenkot’s party, with the support of the Arab parties.
For two years, Folkman served on the National Council for Planning and Building as a representative of the younger generation on behalf of the National Student Union. He helped to elect the ’Kulanu’ party in the Knesset and chaired its faction. The party was established on 27 November 2014 after months of speculation that its leader, Kahlon, would form a new party after taking a break from politics in 2013. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly offered Kahlon the post of Finance Minister as well as portfolios for others in the next government if he agreed to a joint ticket with Likud, but Kahlon declined. Nevertheless, Likud admitted on the day of the 2015 Israeli elections that it had forged a recording of Kahlon promising to support Netanyahu and distributed it to voters the night before. Calling the forgery “criminal”, Kahlon asked for an investigation by the election committee. On 17 April 2020, a source close to Kahlon told Al-Monitor that Kahlon was accelerating his already-planned retirement from Netanyahu’s government and now planned to resign before a new Israeli government was formed.
Mr. Folkman joined the team setting up Gilad Erdan’s new party in August 2026, then left within weeks after Eisenkot’s Yashar approached him. Gilad Erdan (Hebrew: גלעד ארדן; born 30 September 1970) is an Israeli politician and diplomat who was a prominent figure in the Likud party, serving as a long-time member of the Knesset from 2003 to 2020 and holding numerous senior ministerial portfolios, including in the UN, where he defended the genocide of the Gazans.
He was also a member of the board of directors of Beit Yitzhak Ben-Zevi, in the East Jerusalem Development Company, which was responsible for the evacuation of the Palestinians. In 2008, he managed the youth headquarters for Nir Barkat’s mayoral campaign, a member of Likud. After Barkat’s victory, Folkman served as a policy advisor to the mayor of Jerusalem and later managed the policy and strategy department of the Jerusalem Municipality.
What is the Higher Planning Council (HPC)
The HPC has proven that in Israel, the formal erosion of commitments made under previous agreements is the norm. The Higher Planning Council (HPC) is an executive arm of the “Civil Administration” and approved the construction of 456 new colonial units in the settlement of Mitzpe Yeriho near Jericho, in addition to 120 others in the Karnei Shomron settlement, as part of Israel’s plan to expand colonial settlement in the occupied West Bank.
The decision also includes building a 1,000-square-meter facility for Shavei Hebron Yeshiva near the Beit Romano settlement in Hebron.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed the decisions, saying: “We continue to bring thousands of new residents to Mitzpe Yeriho and establish a new building for the Shavei Hebron Yeshiva” in Hebron, describing the approval of this number of units as “a national initiative that consolidates our hold on the area” and “establishes clear facts that prevent the establishment of an Arab terror state in our heartland.” The dismantling of Palestinian governing mechanisms in Hebron, and the extension of direct Israeli authority into one of the largest Palestinian cities in the West Bank.
What can we expect from these parties?
Already on the first day of the Zionist Parliament, the Arab parties have proven to be loyalist for the Zionist state and government. We can expect that in the future, with the rationale: ‘we must oppose Netanyahu’ they will support a government that will continue the occupation and the killing in Gaza, the West Bank, South Lebanon, and South Syria. This is the politics of the ‘’Popular Front ’’ that always ends with a defeat for the working class and the oppressed.
But not only will they be responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians and other Arabs; so is the “Socialist Struggle’ that has given the Joint List critical support in spite of their recognition that the Joint List strategy is a Popular Front.
Anyone familiar with the history of the Spanish Civil War knows that, for Trotsky, the POUM’s decision to sign the Popular Front pact in early 1936 was definitive proof of the party’s political bankruptcy. The POUM supported “an electoral strategy that was designed to secure another bourgeois republican government. which is essentially the position of “socialist struggle ” that trails the Joint List.