Former Israeli PMs Bennett and Lapid join forces ahead of elections to form the largest party

ISRAEL - In Brief 27 Apr 2026 by Sani Ziv

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In an interesting political development, Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party and former prime minister, and Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, have agreed to unite politically ahead of the next elections. Bennett is expected to lead the joint list, with Lapid serving as number two. The move is intended to unify the center-right bloc and present an alternative to the current government. The rationale behind the potential alliance between Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett is to create a large political force that would be able to compete with Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party. Current polls suggest that while Netanyahu is lagging in the polls at the bloc level (i.e., below the 61-seat threshold needed to form a government), his party remains the largest. Therefore, the strategic objective of the Yair Lapid-Naftali Bennett alliance is to consolidate the center-right bloc into a larger political camp that could exceed the right-religious bloc and become the largest party in the Knesset. Bennett has reportedly attempted to bring former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot into the move, but at this stage Eisenkot, who leads his own political party (Yashar), is expected to continue running independently. It is important to recall that, in Israel’s political system, the mandate to form a government is given to the Knesset member who receives the most recommendations from fellow members and not necessarily the head of the largest party. As a result, the key variable is bloc dynamics. At this stage, it is not clear that such a merger would materially increase the size of the opposition. According to the latest poll-of-polls (an aggregate of several recent surveys), the...