Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participate in the state memorial ceremony for the fallen of the Iron Swords War on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on October 16, 2025.
Alex Kolomoisky | Pool | Via Reuters
Two of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most formidable political rivals said on Sunday they were joining forces in a bid to oust his coalition government in the upcoming election expected later this year.
The former prime ministers — right-wing Naftali Bennett and centrist Yair Lapid — issued statements announcing the merger of their parties, Bennett 2026 and There is a Future.
“We are standing here together for the sake of our children. The State of Israel must change direction,” Lapid said, standing alongside Bennett at a joint news conference.
Bennett said the new party will be called Together, and that he will be its leader. “After 30 years, it is time to part with Netanyahu and open a new chapter for Israel,” he said.
Since his first term in the 1990s, Netanyahu has become a polarising figure at home and abroad.
Joining forces once more
Bennett and Lapid have joined forces before, putting an end to Netanyahu’s successive 12-year tenure in a 2021 election, only to form a coalition government that, with a thin majority and deeply divided over major issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, survived barely 18 months.
Former Prime Minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett reacts while visiting the area destroyed by an Iranian ballistic missile last night, leaving over 50 wounded residents on March 22, 2026, in Dimona, Israel. Iran has continued firing waves of drones and missiles at Israel after the United States and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran early on Feb. 28.
Alexi Rosenfeld | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Their coalition included for the first time in Israel’s history a party drawn from the country’s Arab minority — Palestinian by heritage, Israeli by citizenship — the United Arab List (UAL).
Before that, the duo muscled their way into his 2013 coalition government, leaving Netanyahu’s traditional ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies out.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, made a comeback when he won the November 2022 election and formed the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.
But Hamas’ 2023 attack on southern Israel, which plunged the Middle East into turmoil and saw Israel fighting on multiple fronts, left Netanyahu’s security credentials in tatters and polls since then have predicted that he will lose the next election, due by the end of October.
Netanyahu, the most dominant Israeli politician of his generation, has, however, shown remarkable political survival skills in the past.
On Sunday, he posted a 2021 photo of Bennett and Lapid with UAL head Mansour Abbas. “They did it once, they’ll do it again,” Netanyahu’s Telegram post said, an apparent swipe at their short-lived 2021 coalition that included UAL.
Bennett said that he will not seek a coalition with Arab parties again and ruled out ceding any land to enemies, an apparent reference to the Palestinians’ goal of establishing an independent state in territories occupied by Israel.
Shifting political map
Bennett, 54, a pugnacious former army commando turned tech millionaire, has been trailing Netanyahu in election polls. An April 23 survey by Israel’s N12 News found Bennett securing 21 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, compared with 25 for Netanyahu’s Likud.
It found Lapid’s party securing only 7 seats, down from the 24 it currently holds, while Netanyahu’s coalition of right-wing and religious parties commands only 50 seats, compared with at least 60 for Bennett and Lapid’s likely coalition, which would include several smaller factions.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid looks on during his speech at the Rabin memorial rally. Hundreds of thousands gathered in several rallies across Israel to mark 30 years since the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The main rally, whose turnout was reportedly around 150,000, was held at the Tel Aviv square where the Labor leader was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995, by right-wing extremist Yigal Amir after a peace rally.
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The survey was on par with previous polls by academic institutions and other Israeli media outlets, which have put Bennett as the top contender against Netanyahu, though the political map could still shift.
Lapid, 62, a telegenic former TV news anchor who writes pop songs and thrillers, speaks as the voice of Israel’s secular middle class, which has become increasingly incensed by what it sees as an unfair tax and military service burden.
Netanyahu’s ultra-religious political allies have been seeking an exemption for their communities — who have low employment and many state benefits — from the conscript military.
It is a hot-button issue in Israel that has become all the more pressing since the military has warned of being over-stretched, and in the last two years, has exacted the highest military death toll in decades.
Both Lapid and Bennett have made it a central issue for their campaign. They have also criticized Netanyahu for failing to leverage military gains into strategic wins over Iran and the groups it supports in Lebanon and Gaza — Hezbollah and Hamas.
