Israel\u2019s far-right Naftali Bennett and centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid have announced that they will resume the alliance that last toppled Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government in 2021, which at the time ended the latter\u2019s 12-year hold on the country\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n
Speaking in Herzliya on Sunday, both former prime ministers addressed the waiting press pack from identical podiums, with Bennett telling reporters, \u201cTonight, we are uniting and establishing the \u2018Together\u2019 party under my leadership, a party that will lead to a great victory, and the opening of a new era for our beloved country.\u201d<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n But, according to a poll published by the Jerusalem Post on Monday, the new bloc is projected to win four fewer seats than the combined total of both politicians\u2019 former parties if they were running separately, and would have one seat fewer than Netanyahu\u2019s Likud Party.<\/p>\n And while a significant proportion of Israelis are opposed to Netanyahu, the Bennett-Lapid alliance is not new, and has its own opponents. When the two opposition figures last joined forces in 2021 and won the election, they formed an unusually broad coalition spanning right-wing, centre, and left-wing parties, as well as \u2013 for the first time in Israeli government \u2013 a party representing Palestinian citizens of Israel.<\/p>\n The self-styled \u201cchange government\u201d was built on an agreement to rotate the premiership, with Bennett serving first as prime minister, before Lapid took over after 12 months.<\/p>\n \u201cThey achieved quite a lot,\u201d political pollster and former Netanyahu aide Mitchell Barak said. \u201cAs well as stabilising the government and passing an overdue budget, they went some way in sidelining the religious parties, reducing specialised funding and preferential treatment of them.\u201d<\/p>\n But while the administration briefly stabilised governance after a period of political deadlock, multiple elections and fractious coalition building, months of infighting followed, and the government ultimately collapsed in 2022, worn down by defections from Bennett\u2019s bloc to Likud and others, as well as escalating internal disagreements over security, and policy towards the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n There is little evidence that the Bennett-Lapid partnership would offer anything different for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Both politicians have been consistent cheerleaders for Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza, even if they have occasionally taken issue with how it was being prosecuted.<\/p>\n While Lapid has previously paid lip service to the idea of a two-state solution, Bennett has repeatedly stressed his opposition to a Palestinian state. Earlier this month, he wrote that his position was \u201cnot giving up our land and preventing a Palestinian state\u201d.<\/p>\n Bennett has gone further in making clear his attitude towards Palestinians. In October 2018, he said that if he were defence minister, he would authorise a \u201cshoot-to-kill\u201d policy against Palestinians attempting to cross the boundary between Gaza and Israel. When asked specifically whether this would include children, he replied: \u201cThey are not children \u2013 they are terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n And even the inclusivity of having a Palestinian party in the 2021-2022 government is being reversed: Bennett has made clear that he now only wants \u201cZionist\u201d parties in government, excluding \u201cArab parties\u201d comprised of Palestinian citizens of Israel \u2013 20 percent of the country\u2019s population.<\/p>\n \u201cLook, this [the Netanyahu government] is the most extreme government you can imagine, and it may be \u2013 that if international pressure is there \u2013\u00a0 a Bennett-Lapid government might listen to it,\u2019 Hassan Jabareen, the founder of Palestinian legal rights organisation Adalah, told Al Jazeera. \u201cBut by already saying that they won\u2019t ally with any Arab party, they\u2019ve delegitimised the Arab vote and legitimised the racism that Palestinians face every day.\u201d<\/p>\n Bennett and Lapid hope that kind of attitude will win harden their nationalist credentials in a country that continues to attack its neighbours, and in which settler groups run wild in the occupied West Bank, attacking and killing Palestinians.<\/p>\n One of Netanyahu\u2019s main strengths in Israel has been his nationalism, which has appealed to a population generally supportive of the war in Gaza, the occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land, and conflict with Lebanon and Iran \u2013 even if they appear to have slipped beyond his control.<\/p>\n Netanyahu\u2019s soft underbelly, however, has been the multiple corruption charges he faces, and the related ongoing trial, increasing his desparation to stay in power in the hope that will protect him from justice.<\/p>\n But the corruption charges, along with his attempts to deflect from any responsibility for the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and his attempts to weaken the independence of the judiciary, have left many Israelis unsatisfied.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWith Netanyahu, political resilience comes baked in,\u201d Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flashenberg said, referencing the continuous controversies that have dogged the Israeli prime minister throughout his career. \u201cMy instinct is that he\u2019ll still be prime minister after the elections. He\u2019s nowhere near as popular as he was before October 7, but time and wars have gone some way to eclipsing that.\u201d<\/p>\n It is also important not to read too much into the new alliance, Flashenberg added, not least before further polls and news of further alliances emerged. \u201cThis is more like the semifinal than the final,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing who will lead the anti-Netanyahu bloc and, with Lapid joining Bennett, that looks to be clear. Now we have to wait on the others, such as [former chief of staff and Yashar party chairman Gadi] Eisenkot.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Israel\u2019s far-right Naftali Bennett and centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid have announced that they will resume the alliance that last toppled Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government in 2021, which at the time ended the latter\u2019s 12-year hold on the country\u2019s leadership. Speaking in Herzliya on Sunday, both former prime ministers addressed the waiting press pack from identical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Little hope for Palestinians<\/h2>\n
Down, not out<\/h2>\n
![\"TOPSHOT](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/afp_69e7c6a471cd-1776797348.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"