Mayor Meir Yitzhak Halevi of Eilat announced on Tuesday that he was leaving the Likud Party over the closure of Sde Dov Airport in Tel Aviv.
Speaking to reporters following an emergency meeting about the airport closure, Halevi directly accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of not working to stop the closure and said the director-general of the Prime Minister's Office was even doing everything to close it. The mayor expressed concern that as a result of the move, domestic tourism in the city would fall by more than 20 percent.