Lapid’s great gamble: Once the government is in place, the Haredim will join
A narrow, fractured coalition needs the ultra-Orthodox parties to survive. Bennett is trying a conciliatory approach to achieve that, while Lapid opts for blunt force trauma
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Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony for the victims of the 1948 Altalena incident, at Nachalat Yitzhak cemetery in Tel Aviv on May 26, 2021. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
As Bennett and Lapid — now publicly committed to each other — try to lock down the coalition agreements that will give shape to their declaration of intent, the thorny problem of actually building and stabilizing that unwieldy coalition is still ahead of them.
This is a coalition that could have formed in no other political context. Nothing unites deep-right Yamina with fervently progressive Meretz, nothing could bring ex-Likud hawk Gideon Sa’ar to make common cause with Islamic Movement official Mansour Abbas, except the desire across wide swaths of the Israeli electorate and political system to see the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s long rule.




