Bennett and Lapid Merge Parties, Call for Eisenkot to Join

Peloni:  See more HERE.

Well, it would seem that former PM Bennett, who once claimed to be ten steps to the Right of Bibi, is now linking his future to the sinking hopes of Lapid under the party name of “Together”.  I am only surprised that the name of their party is not “Together Again” in reference to a re-do of their previous gambit to do whatever was needed to unseat Bibi from power, something which they seem to hope to do once again…Together.  Of course, they are leaving space for Gadi Eisenkot to join, but it seems that that the Ra’am leader, who recently stated his divorce from the Muslim Brotherhood, has had no such invite being afforded to him…but after the election, no doubt he too will be offered a seat at Bennett’s table so that the reunion of the govt of Spare Parts will be reunited once more…Together.   Does this gambit of reviving the anti-Bibi cabal have the potential of restoring a Left-Arab coalition to power in the first post October 7 national election?  Time will tell of course, but the problem for the Right lies more with those who support the Right under the leadership of the candidate whom the people cast the greatest number of votes, be that Bibi or some one else.  In other words, any candidates for Knesset which provide a greater import to disposing Bibi than to promoting the Right wing nationalist agenda is clearly not a candidate of the Right.  The coming election will be a difficult and chaotic affair, even more than usual, but it seems there will be little support lost by those who would vote for the Right as Bennett strikes his colors and openly joins the Left to maximize the effort to defeat the nationalist camp.  As Smotrich noted, the Left can handle their votes however they like.

Notably, on hearing of the merger between Bennett and Lapid, Bibi posted the simple comment that: “They will do it again,” and of course, he is quite correct.  The absolutely mean to do it again, and perhaps that is the true inference of naming their new party ‘Together’.

Text:

Former PMs Naftali Bennett (@naftalibennett) and Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) announce merger of their parties under Bennett’s leadership.

With the move, Bennett officially abandons the right wing by merging with Lapid’s Yesh Atid party. After failing to pull votes from Netanyahu’s camp, this is a survival move that left-wing candidates are applauding without realizing it comes at their expense.

Finance Minister Smotrich (@bezalelsm) dismissed the merger, saying he won’t tell the left how to divide its votes. Minister Miki Zohar (@zoharm7) mocked the pairing as ideologically hollow partners struggling to pass the electoral threshold.

April 26, 2026 | 14 Comments »

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14 Comments / 14 Comments

      • Isn’t there a tremendous resentment from the “Left” against Bibi for Rabin assassination?
        Isn’t the “Oct 7” “failure of intel/IDF” being placed squarely on Bibi? At least the Bibi’s haters are trying to blame him! A kind of payback?

        • @stevenl
          Yes, both of these are true, but I don’t see them as being related.

          In fact, I would argue that the real connection between Bibi and the Left is that they see him as the reason why the Left has fallen from power, and so they have managed all manner of political, legal and judicial inventions to marginalize and humiliate him, while not improving their own situation one iota. The reason is that Bibi is not the source of the Lef’s problems. Their anti-Zioinist, pro-Globalist ideology is the real issue with which they have to deal, and of course, they won’t.

  2. @Rafi

    Merging a list with Lapid does probably nothing to do this, is my original gut reaction.

    I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I believe it does the complete opposite.

  3. Bennett’s new party needs to pull Likud voters. Merging a list with Lapid does probably nothing to do this, is my original gut reaction.

    Lapid is attractive to less and less voters and only in Center or center/left.
    I think it maybe, hard to explain this merger. I do not see where it gets great number of voters from Bennett’s past parties. They are mostly voting either for Smotrich, Ben-Gvir or Likud now.

    Bennett and Lapid are trying something new and not niche party, so Bennett explains it. Will this appeal to large number of voters??
    I think they need to pull in Eisenkot to have it possibly work but so far Eisenkot wants to head a party and is not satisfied with being part of the leadership.

    Bennett will have to sell the specific points he will try and accomplish to have a chance to pull this off. So far he has listed the following points:

    1. Immediate National Oct. 7th Inquiry

    2. Draft of all age eligible men

    3. Let Individual Cities Decide on Public Transportation on Shabbat

    4. Civil Marriage

    • @Rafi, your 4 points are interesting. Just considering them in your order:
      1. Immediate National 10/7 Inquiry: Everybody seems to think that Netanyahu has something or even lots of things to hide here. However, if that were the case, he would run the inquiry under his own supervision rather than under that of Bennet. This goes much further however; the Supreme Court, which has grabbed the say on anything it feels it would like to, has shown that they want to control this inquiry. This sounds, at first, like a good idea, until we take a closer look at their initiatives.
      2. Draft of all eligible men: That is the law at present but some special cases get a free ride. The law needs to be fine-tuned to include those special cases. In fact, some men and women are ineligible for a number of reasons. What you mean here is the Haredim and you should simply say that. I fully agree with you but the current engagement in the government is mostly affected by the refusal of Bennet, Lapid and Eisenkot to join. This leaves Netanyahu with the same choices that the Bennet/Lapid government had: religious or Arab.
      3. Let cities decide on public transportation on Shabbat: This is a fully different issue from the rest but indicates that those who want to deal with transportation on Shabbat are back hacking at the religious parties again. On one hand, these parties cause a lot of strife because they want to confine the public to their rules but actually, there is a system of shared taxi transportation that operates quite well on Shabbat. The real problem is that the busses would need to be driven on Shabbat too and that is less of a government issue than of the drivers.
      4. Civil marriage: This is a weightier subject. Currently, the religious representatives are in control of who gets married and who doesn’t. This leads to a lot of greater and smaller issues that those willing to marry have to face. Just as an example, there are very few marriages where the lady is a virgin at her first marriage. She is actually coerced into lying about it because the virgin is being married to a man and that is his understanding (before he theoretically gets to check the goods.). This system depends on biblical laws but the majority of people living in Israel at the moment do not strictly follow those laws. On the other hand, there are lots of other laws like the aforementioned travel on Shabbat that are not strictly followed either and people who drive on Shabbat near religious enclaves are likely to be stoned.

      Nothing, it seems, is straightforward or easy in Israel.
      Am Israel Chai!!

  4. Last time didn’t work so well. If they manage to convince the public to vote for them again, it will again not work out so well for the public. There will be no judicial reform and probably the improvements Netanyahu tried unsuccessfully to introduce will be dropped completely. If the do manage to get elected, my guess is that Netanyahu will retire. Quite honestly, in that case, the Israelis will get what they mistakenly voted for.

  6. Hopefully Bennett has learned his lesson as he claims and will not join with the Arab parties. He also claims that he will not sit with parties who do not send their sons to the IDF (meaning UTJ and Shas).

    Israel needs to find a way to starting drafting some reasonable amount of Haredim say 20 to 30% of draft age.

    Avoiding the draft now is now intolerable to all but the Haredim.

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