Who is Matan Kahana, Israel's proposed new Knesset speaker?

The leaders of Israel's anti-Netanyahu coalition on Tuesday announced an agreement to nominate Matan Kahana as the new Knesset speaker, hours before the new parliament was due to be sworn in following last month's inconclusive election.

As opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot attempts to form a government, the Change bloc hopes to use its sway in the Knesset to move forward with some of its top priorities, including setting up a commission to investigate Netanyahu's alleged security failures during the 7 October 2023 surprise Hamas attack.

But Kahana's nomination also highlights the political similarities between Netanyahu's opponents and Israel's far right when it comes to Palestinians.

A former Israeli fighter pilot who participated in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, Kahana opposes Palestinian statehood, supports Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and previously expressed a wish to expel Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories.

Although he has positioned himself as more willing to compromise than figures such as far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, those differences largely concern domestic Israeli politics, religious affairs and the country's democratic institutions rather than the rights of Palestinians

Former pilot

Born in Haifa in 1972, Kahana spent three years of his early life in New York before his family went back to Israel.

He entered the Israeli military at the beginning of the 1990s and joined Sayeret Matkal, the elite special forces unit that has produced some of the country's most influential political leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu and former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Naftali Bennett.

In 1994, he trained as a pilot and went on to command the 116 and 109 squadrons.

During his time in the Israeli air force, Kahana participated in three major military assaults on Gaza - Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, the eight-day offensive in 2012 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014, during which Israeli attacks killed more than 2,000 Palestinians.

He also flew combat missions during Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon.

He retired from the military in 2018 as a colonel before entering Israeli politics the following year.

From the far right to Eisenkot's party

Though currently a member of Eisenkot's centre-right Yashar party, Kahana previously worked with more hardline forces earlier in his political career.

His entry into politics saw him join the hardline New Right party alongside Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked. He was first elected to the Knesset in September 2019 on the joint list for Yamina, an alliance between Bennett and Shaked's party and a coalition of far-right forces that included Bezalel Smotrich's Tkuma and Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power).

He was given a cabinet position in Naftali Bennett's government in 2021-2022, where he served as religious services minister.

As minister, Kahana pursued reforms to weaken the Chief Rabbinate's control over religious services such as conversion and kosher certification and elevate religious Zionist rabbis to senior positions.

Like others in the religious Zionism camp, he advocates for ending the draft exemption for ultra-Orthodox Jews and believes that both military service and Torah study are important for Israel.

Unlike radical religious Zionists, he does not want to transform the country into a religious-based state and criticised the Netanyahu government's overhaul of the judiciary.

However, his positions on the occupation, settlements and Palestinian statehood place him firmly within Israel's nationalist right, despite his disagreements with its more extreme factions on other issues.

Military hawk

Kahana, however, aligns with Israel's security establishment in advocating for overwhelming military force against the country's enemies.

He has previously spoken in favour of pre-emptive military action against Iran, backs Israel's control over the occupied West Bank and is staunchly opposed to any form of Palestinian state.

His military record also includes participation in successive Israeli onslaughts on Gaza, where large numbers of Palestinian civilians were killed, and extensive civilian infrastructure was destroyed.

Although Kahana called in 2025 for an end to Israel's war on Gaza and a negotiated agreement, his position did not amount to support for Palestinian self-determination or an end to Israel's occupation.

Remarks about expelling Palestinians

One of Kahana's most controversial statements came in June 2022, when he told secondary school students that he wished he could remove Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories.

"If there was a button that could be pressed, that would remove all the Arabs from here, send them on an express train to Switzerland ... I would press that button," he said in remarks broadcast by Israeli media and reported by Al Jazeera.

He also dismissed Palestinian accounts of their history and displacement, saying: "They are telling themselves that they are the ones who always lived here and we came and expelled them."

The comments sparked condemnation from Palestinian lawmakers, including Walid Taha of the United Arab List, who responded: "Matan Kahana, we are here because this is our homeland."

Palestinian lawmaker Ahmad Tibi also criticised the remarks, saying there was a button that could remove Kahana from the government and Knesset.

Following the backlash, Kahana said his comments had been "worded poorly" and insisted that both Jewish and Palestinian populations were there to stay and needed to coexist.

However, the remarks drew attention to his views on Palestinian presence and national identity, despite his attempts to distance himself from calls for forced expulsion.

Anti-Palestinian state, pro-settler, anti-settler violence

Like most Jewish Israeli political figures, Kahana opposes the creation of a Palestinian state and supports Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law.

His positions on Palestinian statehood and Israeli control over occupied territory overlap with those of politicians in Netanyahu's far-right coalition, even as he differs from them on questions of judicial independence and religious governance.

He has also expressed sympathy with demands for Israeli resettlement of Gaza but argued that doing so now would be a strategic mistake.

His objection was therefore framed in strategic terms rather than as an endorsement of Palestinian sovereignty over the territory.

Unlike others in the religious Zionism camp, he has acknowledged the problem of settler terrorism in the West Bank and said it must be fought with "full force".

But he also claimed that the violence was carried out by a tiny minority of settlers and described "settler violence" as a "despicable term" that unfairly implicated all Israeli settlers.