Eisenkot said facing internal pressure to rule out Ra’am as Yashar slips

Members of the Yashar party have unsuccessfully pressured leader Gadi Eisenkot to preemptively disqualify the Ra’am party from a possible governing coalition, Haaretz reports.

Among Zionist parties in the bloc seeking to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, only Yashar and the Democrats have not ruled out allying with Ra’am. Among those who have disqualified a future coalition with the Islamist party is B’Yachad, headed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who included Ra’am in their 2021-2022 government.

According to the unsourced report, calls for Eisenkot to join them have increased as Yashar has begun to slip in the polls. Several surveys last week showed the party down two or three seats, presaging a slight edge for the pro-Netanyahu bloc in the tightly contested race.

Eisenkot has responded that his conditions for Ra’am joining a potential government headed by him have not been met. But he argued that disqualifying the party now would narrow the party’s path to forming a government, which would also turn voters away, and noted that he has also not ruled out working with parties on the far right.

While horse-race polls in the months leading up to elections are not seen as overly prescient, parties nonetheless use them to gauge whether various decisions will win or lose them votes.