Bennett files complaint against Likud over fake image of him with Arab party leaders

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s party filed a police complaint Monday against the ruling Likud party after it shared a manipulated image showing Bennett and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid celebrating with Arab politicians following the announcement last week that Arab parties would work toward reuniting in a new joint list ahead of the upcoming Knesset election.

“The Bennett 2026 party has filed a police complaint against the Likud party for malicious forgery, regarding an edited and false photo that was published on the official account of the Likud party,” Bennett’s party said in a statement, adding that the party would submit a petition to the Central Elections Committee as well.

“The State of Israel is facing a fateful election campaign, and therefore it is necessary to set red lines now,” the statement said. “We will fight every attempt to produce fake news that poisons the discourse and divides the country.”

The hawkish politician is widely seen as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s primary challenger for the premiership in this year’s Knesset election.

In 2021-2022, Bennett teamed up with a bloc of parties opposed to Netanyahu — including the Islamist Ra’am — and unseated the longtime premier after more than 12 years in power.

Days before the 2021 election, Bennett had promised live on air not to join a government with Lapid or with Ra’am, only to break that promise weeks later.

קואליציית המשרתים pic.twitter.com/MdTigYbVkF

— הליכוד (@Likud_Party) January 22, 2026

That diverse and short-lived coalition, led jointly by Bennett and Lapid, was the first in decades to include an Arab party.

In the 2022 election, Netanyahu’s Likud regained power with a bloc of far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties that has stuck together even after the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught.

Netanyahu and his allies have been waging a relentless campaign against Bennett ever since he sent the Likud leader to the opposition, saying he will again partner with Arab parties if given the chance.

In the latest instance, Likud’s Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem told Radio 103FM in an interview Monday that Bennett “should sit in prison.”

“He conned the nation of Israel. He stole the soul of right-wing voters,” he charged.

On Thursday, the four Arab parties – Hadash, Ra’am, Ta’al and Balad – signed an agreement to work toward reestablishing their Joint List bloc in the upcoming election.

The party heads, Hadash’s Ayman Odeh, Ra’am’s Mansour Abbas, Ta’al’s Ahmed Tibi, and Balad’s Sami Abu Shahadeh, were in Sakhnin, as part of a nationwide general strike called over the police’s failure to stem a surging violent crime wave besetting the Arab community.

The Arab parties have for months been in talks to revive the list, which had seemed halted amid internal fights between Ra’am and the other parties, mainly over Abbas’s demand for the bloc to be merely a technical alliance to allow him the option of splitting off after the elections and joining a governing coalition separately.

According to Abbas, the other parties acquiesced, enabling an agreement to be signed.

A spokesperson for one of the parties told The Times of Israel that the four party heads – principally Abbas – had been ambushed into a public agreement, due to widespread pressure from the Arab community to revive the bloc amid the crime epidemic sweeping Arab society and as the crowd in Sakhnin pressured them.

Arab society experienced its deadliest year on record in 2025, with 252 homicide victims. And since the start of January, 20 more people have lost their lives to violent crime.

Nearly all Arab cities and towns shut down Thursday as part of the protest action, which evolved from a local strike in Sakhnin after several shop owners were targeted in extortion-related shootings.

Ariela Karmel contributed to this report.