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Tuesday, September 22, 2026
Opposition leaders to hold election strategy talks without Ra’am
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.
The leaders of the main Zionist opposition parties will meet Saturday night to coordinate their moves ahead of the October 27 election, without Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas, whose Islamist party could prove crucial to their chances of forming a government.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid will host Naftali Bennett, who leads the B’Yachad joint slate established with Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Yashar chairman Gadi Eisenkot, Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman and Democrats leader Yair Golan at his Tel Aviv home, according to a statement from B’Yachad.
While the four main Zionist opposition parties have been polling slightly ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition bloc in recent surveys, with around 55 seats to the coalition’s 51, they remain short of the 61 seats needed for a Knesset majority without support from Ra’am or another party outside the bloc.
The prospect of an opposition government relying on Ra’am has become a central theme of the coalition’s campaign, with Netanyahu and his allies accusing Eisenkot and the other opposition leaders of intending to form a left-wing government dependent on Arab parties. Likud is also seeking to disqualify Ra’am from next month’s election.
Netanyahu himself courted Abbas while trying to form a government after the 2021 election, before Abbas ultimately joined Bennett and Lapid’s short-lived coalition.
The Times of Israel Community.