Yair Golan, Avigdor Liberman welcome Bennett-Lapid merger; right wing attacks union

By Sam Sokol 26 April 2026, 5:28 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Yisrael Beytenu party chief Avigdor Liberman speaks to the Knesset plenum on January 19, 2026. (Noam Moskowitz/Knesset Spokesman's Office)

Opposition party leaders celebrate the merger of Naftali Bennett and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s parties under a single unified electoral list, while members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition slam the move as one aimed at bringing Mansour Abbas’s Islamist Ra’am party into the halls of power.

“I welcome every unification in the bloc,” tweets The Democrats chairman Yair Golan, stating that his party will “constitute the sturdy democratic and liberal backbone in the next government.”

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman wishes the new joint slate success and says that “we must remember that the goal is to replace the October 7 government.”

Reservists party chairman Yoaz Hendel wishes both Bennett and Lapid success while urging “right-wingers who have hesitated until today and oppose the government” to join his own nascent party, saying it is the only true home for the right.

“The Bennett-Lapid ‘brotherhood alliance’ is back to selling the country to the Islamic movement,” declares National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. “Bennett was a radical leftist and will remain a radical leftist.”

The Bennett-Lapid government, which was in office from 2021 to 2022, made history by including the Islamist Ra’am party, led by Mansour Abbas, in its diverse coalition of right-wing, centrist and left-wing parties. The coalition marked the first interruption of Benjamin Netanyahu’s premiership since 2009, and many in the right wing staunchly opposed it and pressured members of Bennett’s Yamina party to leave. They succeeded after a year, when party MKs toppled the government, triggering elections that returned Netanyahu to office.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich posts on X a picture of Bennett and Lapid smiling alongside Abbas, writing, “I’m not telling the left how to split their votes. [This is the] Abbas servant alliance.”

Last March, Bennett told a private audience of US students that the next government he will lead would not include Arab parties, as his previous government did, saying this was a time for Zionist parties to lead Israel.