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Monday, April 27, 2026
Eisenkot calls on opposition leaders to meet in bid to secure ‘Zionist majority’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleAriela Karmel is a political correspondent at The Times of Israel. She previously reported for Calcalist and Haaretz. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African History from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.
Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot calls on opposition leaders to convene, including former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who yesterday announced their joint “Together” slate. Bennett has publicly invited Eisenkot to join the alliance.
According to a statement from Yashar, Eisenkot is reaching out to all “Zionist” opposition parties, including Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu and Yair Golan’s the Democrats, to hold a meeting aimed at securing what he describes as a “Zionist” majority in the next election.
Not included is Blue and White, led by Eisenkot’s former partner, Benny Gantz. Their deteriorating relationship led Eisenkot to exit as Gantz’s number two last year and form his Yashar party. Gantz has suggested he could join a Netanyahu-led government and has resisted attempts to categorize him as part of the opposition bloc.
Also excluded were the Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al and Ra’am parties. Several opposition leaders have said they will not sit in a government with an Arab party after the October 7, 2023, attacks. Announcing their new slate yesterday, Bennett said “Together” would seek to form a coalition relying only on Zionist parties rather than partnering again with Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am, which joined the Bennett-Lapid government in 2021.
However, it remains unclear, even after the Bennett-Lapid merger, how the opposition can assemble a 61-seat majority without support from Arab parties.
The Times of Israel Community.