Rebel Likud MK Dan Illouz submitted his resignation from the Knesset to Speaker Amir Ohana on Tuesday morning.

The resignation comes after Illouz announced that he is joining Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party to prevent “adding another vote for the draft evasion laws advanced by Netanyahu, Goldknopf, and Deri.”

Illouz added: “As long as I served in the Knesset, I worked to block this legislation, which contradicts Likud’s stated values. Netanyahu failed and didn’t take responsibility and must go home. The place for members of the Zionist right is no longer in a Likud that has lost its way, but in Yisrael Beiteinu.”

He will be replaced in the Knesset by the next person on the Likud list, Shabtai Katash, a Chabad chassid, attorney and real estate entrepreneur who will become the first Chareidi Knesset member representing Likud. He won the Chareidi slot in the party primaries in 2022.

Katash learned at the Tomchei Temimim yeshivos in Lod and Kfar Chabad. He previously served as a member of the Lod City Council, where he held the tenders portfolio, and also served as chairman of the city’s Religious Council.

Katash has also served as secretary of the yishuv of Neria, a member of the Central Elections Committee, and a Likud activist, serving as a member of the Likud Central Committee and the secretariat of the party’s Georgian Forum. He holds a bachelor’s degree in law, received semicha from the Chief Rabbinate, and volunteers for ZAKA.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)