by Shimon Sherman
[T]he Bennett-Lapid alliance is likely merely the first in a long series of political shifts and realignments that will become increasingly common as the elections approach. This particular merger has so far not shown a significant effect on the polling and has so far not pushed the opposition over the 61-seat finish line
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| Former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett (left) and Yair Lapid and hold a
press conference in Herzliya announcing their joint list named
“Together” ahead of upcoming elections, April 26, 2026. Photo by Chaim
Goldberg/Flash90. |
On April 26, former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid
announced the merger of the “Bennett 2026" and “Yesh Atid” factions.
Speaking from identical podiums at the Dan Accadia Hotel in Herzliya,
the two leaders launched a unified electoral list named “Together”
(Beyachad). Under the new structural arrangement, Bennett assumes the
top position on the Knesset candidates slate, with Lapid ceding his
leadership role to take the No. 2 spot.
The initial policy
platform introduced during the evening press conference centered on
institutional reform. Immediately stated policy goals included the
establishment of a State Commission of Inquiry into the October 7
attacks, the imposition of an eight-year term limit for the office of
the prime minister, and the implementation of a universal conscription
law.
Bennett framed the alliance as a step in overcoming increased
polarization in Israel. “The era of division is over,” he declared in
his speech. He also positioned the new party as the key to removing
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office. “After 30 years, it is
time to part with Netanyahu and open a new chapter for Israel,” Bennett
said.
Lapid positioned his forfeiture of the top position as a
necessary concession to secure a victory over Netanyahu’s coalition. “To
win the elections, the entire Israeli center must rally behind Naftali
Bennett,” Lapid proclaimed.
The announcement of the Bennett-Lapid merger sparked swift and polarized reactions across the Israeli political spectrum.
Within the opposition bloc, reactions ranged from optimism to caution.
Yashar
party leader Gadi Eisenkot welcomed the alliance as a step toward their
“shared goal” of forming a new government. However, he maintained his
political independence, warning that structural reorganization alone was
insufficient: “For this victory to happen, we need to bring in more
votes; that is our only test. Every union must be judged by that.”
Yisrael
Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman also praised the move, wishing the
new slate success while emphasizing the bloc’s primary objective,
saying, “We must remember that the goal is to replace the October 7
government.”
On the opposition’s left flank, The Democrats
chairman, Yair Golan, embraced the development. He stated he favored
“every unification in the bloc.”
Despite the positive reception of
the announcement on the center-left, some analysts view the merger as a
tactical misstep. Professor Gideon Rahat, senior fellow at the Israeli
Democracy Institute and professor of political science at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, noted the risk of presenting a single target
for the incumbent. “Strategically, I’m not sure that this is the
smartest move, because Netanyahu is very good when it comes to
one-on-one campaigning. It’s an advantage if he has a clear opponent,”
Rahat told JNS.
On the right, the incumbent coalition reacted with
uniform hostility. The Likud party released a statement tying the new
list to Arab factions, asserting, “In any case, Bennett and Lapid will
go with the terrorist-supporting Muslim Brotherhood alliance again.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich dismissed the realignment entirely,
remarking, “I’m not telling the left how to split their votes.”
Foundations of the merger
The
2026 Beyachad merger represents the third major structural alignment
between Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, built upon a long history of
collaboration.
Bennett and Lapid have already allied twice to
reshape Israel’s government, setting aside ideological differences to
consolidate power. In their 2013 “Pact of Brothers,” they refused to
join Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition independently, forcing a joint
entry. This strategic maneuver successfully excluded ultra-Orthodox
factions from the government and secured the Finance Ministry for Lapid.
Later, in 2021, following four inconclusive elections, they engineered
an eight-party coalition spanning far-left, right-wing and Islamist
factions. To secure right-wing backing and finalize the coalition, Lapid
pragmatically agreed to a rotation agreement, allowing Bennett to serve
as prime minister first, while Lapid became alternate prime minister
and foreign minister.
The current alliance also brings several
pragmatic benefits to both Lapid and Bennett. Before the merger
announcement, aggregate polling indicated that Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid
party was facing a severe electoral decline, projected to fall from its
24 mandates in the outgoing Knesset to between four and seven seats,
leaving it hovering near the electoral threshold (3.25%, or four seats).
Dr.
Gayil Talshir from the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew
University noted that this decline drove the timeline. “The initiator of
the move is actually Lapid, because Lapid was losing ground,” Talshir
told JNS. “In last week’s polls, he got between six and seven mandates,
which means that he could have very quickly fallen below the threshold.”
Conversely, Bennett consistently emerged in polls as a highly
viable candidate; however, he faced a critical logistical deficit.
Having sat out the previous elections, he possessed zero outgoing seats,
no active party infrastructure, and no state campaign funding.
The
Israeli party financing law distributes state campaign funds through
“funding units” tied directly to a party’s representation in the
outgoing legislature. With the Central Elections Committee allocating
593 million shekels (about $200 million) for the execution of the 2026
elections (due to be held by Oct. 27), Yesh Atid’s 24 outgoing seats
provide a massive financial incentive for the merger.
In this
sense, Lapid traded the paramount leadership position to ensure the
political survival of his faction, while Bennett gained immediate access
to a state-funded campaign apparatus and Yesh Atid’s established,
disciplined national field organization. Rahat observed that “one is
bringing the votes, the other is bringing the money and the
organization. That’s one of the reasons why they are running together.”
Strategically,
the alliance also serves as an important measure to consolidate
opposition leadership against internal rivals, most notably former IDF
Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot. Before the Bennett-Lapid merger,
Eisenkot’s newly formed Yashar party was actively gaining in the
anti-Netanyahu centrist vote, consistently polling at 14 to 15 mandates.
Bennett and Eisenkot were competing for the same demographic:
security-focused, centrist voters disillusioned with the incumbent
government but structurally unwilling to vote for left-wing parties.
By
absorbing Lapid’s residual base, Bennett immediately eclipsed
Eisenkot’s polling numbers, reestablishing himself as the dominant,
hegemonic figure within the opposition bloc. This consolidation serves a
crucial perceptual purpose for the electorate.
Talshir explained
that “even though in Israeli politics, what is important is getting to
the majority out of 120 seats, not the biggest party, the psychological
effect is that people want to vote for the winner, which pushes them to
the bigger party.”
The urgency of unifying the center is reflected
in Lapid’s readiness to make further strategic concessions. He notified
Bennett that he was willing to drop to the number No. 3 position on the
joint electoral slate if that demotion would guarantee the absorption
of Eisenkot’s Yashar faction into the broader Beyachad merger.
While
ensuring the Beyahad party dominates the opposition bloc, Bennett has
also attempted to minimize bleeding votes from his right flank toward
Likud. His alliance with Lapid poses a risk, as Lapid’s support for a
Palestinian state might cross a red line for anti-Netanyahu Likudniks
who might have sought shelter in Bennett’s party. During their joint
campaign event, Bennett assured voters, “We will safeguard the lands of
our country and will not hand over a single centimeter to the enemy.”
The new party’s color scheme, Blue, White and Green, is also a callback
to Bennett’s old Jewish Home party, which was once a bastion of the
Religious Zionist movement.
To further sanitize the Beyachad list
for right-wing Likudniks, Bennett has promised not to form a coalition
with Arab parties. It is important to note that Bennett broke a similar
promise made during the 2021 campaign. However, this was only done after
Netanyahu’s Likud tried and failed to form a similar alliance.
Impact of the merger
The
immediate electoral impact of the Beyachad merger is inconclusive,
according to Israel’s primary polling institutions, generating two
mutually exclusive models of the 2026 political map.
Most surveys,
such as the Kantar or Midgam polls, conducted in the aftermath of the
merger, indicate that Beyahad and Likud are still running neck and neck,
with most placing them within 1-2 Knesset seats of each other, at
around 26 each. Almost every one of these polls further indicates that
Bennett and Lapid have 1-2 fewer seats combined than they did
separately. Despite this, the new party has effectively left Eisenkot’s
Yashar party in the dust with a 7-14 seat lead according to most polls.
However,
beneath this topline opposition success, the underlying math remains
stagnant. Only one poll (Yossi Taktika) of the eight conducted since the
merger has the Jewish opposition with a 61-seat majority, the bare
minimum needed to form a coalition. Almost all other polls have neither
the coalition nor the opposition able to form a government without the
Arab parties. In this sense, the data indicate that the alliance has
largely reorganized existing opposition votes into a larger central
vessel rather than extracting new defectors from Netanyahu’s incumbent
coalition, which remains highly stable at around 50 seats.
This
reality is not without precedent. Rahat emphasized the fallacy of
unified lists, stating, “It’s very important not to think that if you
are united, you’re going to get more support. This is not true. The
elections in which we had the Bennett government, they actually ran
separately, but all passed the electoral threshold, so they got more
seats.”
However, an inverse reality emerges from the data
published by Shlomo Filber and his Direct Polls. Unlike the randomized
phone sampling employed by traditional firms such as Midgam, Filber
relies on SMS text messages and digital respondent panels, leading to
significantly different results from other surveys. Filber’s polling
company has had Netanyahu’s coalition with a dominant 64-66 seats since
August 2025 and above the minimum 61 seats since September 2024. Filber
polls in the aftermath of the merger actually indicate that the move had
a significant impact on the electoral map, with Bennett and Lapid
gaining six seats due to the merger relative to the last poll before the
union. However, the Filber poll still has Netanyahu’s coalition at a
comfortable 64 seats, with most of Bennett’s new votes coming from
Eisenkot.
The accuracy of the Filber polls data has been
frequently questioned due to his long-term affiliation with Netanyahu.
As a former director-general of the Communications Ministry under
Netanyahu and an ongoing state witness in the prime minister’s Case 4000
corruption trial, he is seen as a political operator.
Talshir was
blunt in her assessment, stating, “Filber was and is Netanyahu’s right
hand ..., his poll numbers are part of the campaign to boost Likud
morale.”
However, Filber also has a well-established track record
of accurately calling elections. During the 2022 election cycle, Direct
Polls was virtually the only major firm to accurately detect the
underlying right-wing vote mobilization that delivered Netanyahu’s
64-seat victory, while traditional pollsters consistently and
incorrectly projected a 60-60 parliamentary deadlock.
Talshir
observed that there is methodological merit to his numbers, noting,
“Filber is right in several of his assertions. ... We know that closer
to the election, there is an effect of going back home. With people who
are traditionally Likud voters, and now say that they may vote for the
opposition, the nearer we get to the election, the more chances that
they will change their mind.”
Furthermore, she added, “Filber is
saying, and rightly so, that the other pollsters don’t have a good
feeling of what will happen with the ultra-Orthodox vote, because they
always give the ultra-Orthodox fewer seats than they actually get.”
The future of the electoral map
The 2026 electoral map remains highly volatile and is likely to change significantly before the vote. According to Channel 12,
a breakaway faction dubbed “Likud Bet” is actively considering breaking
off from Likud. This initiative, spearheaded by traditional,
institutional right-wing figures, including sitting Likud member of
Knesset Yuli Edelstein, shows mounting dissatisfaction with Netanyahu’s
leadership in the party.
Furthermore, a broad spectrum of smaller
parties, including Benny Gantz’s Blue and White, Bezalel Smotrich’s
Religious Zionism and Yoaz Hendel’s newly formed “The Reservists,” are
consistently failing to secure the minimum required votes to enter the
Knesset while holding several seats’ worth of support between
themselves. This threshold crisis practically guarantees an impending
wave of secondary mergers before the final party lists are submitted.
In
this sense, the Bennett-Lapid alliance is likely merely the first in a
long series of political shifts and realignments that will become
increasingly common as the elections approach. This particular merger
has so far not shown a significant effect on the polling and has so far
not pushed the opposition over the 61-seat finish line, though it likely
did secure Bennett’s dominant position in that camp. Ultimately, beyond
factional positioning, the real impact of this and all other mergers
can only be evaluated based on two principles: whether it saved a party
from falling below the electoral threshold, and whether it brought in
votes from the opposite camp.
Shimon Sherman is a columnist covering global security, Middle Eastern affairs, and
geopolitical developments. His reporting provides in-depth analysis on
topics such as the resurgence of ISIS, Iran’s nuclear ambitions,
judicial reforms in Israel, and the evolving landscape of militant
groups in Syria and Iraq. With a focus on investigative journalism and
expert interviews, his work offers critical insights into the most
pressing issues shaping international relations and security.
Source: https://www.jns.org/analysis/the-beyachad-gamble-inside-the-bennett-lapid-bid-to-topple-netanyahu
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