Likud Chairman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently approached the Likud party tribunal with a dramatic request to terminate the membership of Pinhas Idan. The petition was filed following the August 2026 disruptions at Ben Gurion Airport, which resulted in flight delays, the closure of check-in counters, and distress to thousands of passengers. According to a report in Maariv, Netanyahu alleges that this was a deliberate political shutdown intended to harm the political echelon, in violation of a prior commitment Idan made to the tribunal.
The legal background for the petition rests on a 2024 court ruling regarding Idan, in which he was warned against the recurrence of similar actions. The petition argues that the circumstances previously cited for leniency and a mere warning are no longer applicable. Netanyahu emphasizes that the Likud constitution allows for the termination of membership for those providing substantive aid to political competitors, arguing that the reputational and economic damage caused by the disruptions constitutes, in practice, assistance to the party's rivals.
Furthermore, the claim is raised that even if there were a factual basis for operational difficulties, the manner in which the steps were taken was disproportionate. In contrast, Pinhas Idan rejects these allegations and presents a fundamentally different version. According to him, there was no organized strike or planned industrial action; the disruptions were the result of physical and health-related distress among employees suffering from profound burnout.
Idan claims that no wage demands were made and that the crisis stemmed from a manpower shortage to which the Authority's management failed to respond. In correspondence with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport, Idan demanded their immediate intervention to improve working conditions to prevent a collapse of public services ahead of the Tishrei holidays. The central dispute before the Likud tribunal is both factual and legal: Were the disruptions an organized action with a political motive, as Netanyahu claims, or were they a spontaneous reaction to human and operational hardships, as Idan contends?
The tribunal will be required to rule on the classification of the strike under accepted labor laws, while examining the dominant motive for the action. For party members and the public, the practical significance of this proceeding extends beyond party lines. The tribunal’s ruling may set a stringent benchmark regarding the ability of officials in managerial and organizational positions to take actions affecting national infrastructure. The petition underscores that, according to Ministry of Finance estimates, the direct damage to the economy is valued at tens of millions of shekels, reinforcing the argument regarding the severity of the incident and the lack of proportionality of the action as presented in the petition.