Yair Golan urges center-left merger for ousting Netanyahu, but Lapid uninterested
The Democrats head calls for Yesh Atid and National Unity to join forces with him, insists broad center all on the same team; officials close to opposition leader say it’s a losing strategy
The Democrats party leader Yair Golan on Thursday called for a pre-election merger with the two largest centrist parties to compete with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc — but drew a rebuke from unnamed sources close to his would-be partner, Yair Lapid.
“We must unite before the elections and form the largest party within the bloc, a party that will be the alternative to lead the next government and set Israel’s course,” Golan said at a conference titled “Democratic Israel Will Win,” hosted by the Berl Katznelson Foundation.
He urged Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who chairs the center-left Yesh Atid, and Benny Gantz, who chairs the centrist National Unity, to “get under the stretcher” and work together to offer voters what he referred to as a democratic Zionist alternative.
Golan emphasized the need to rebuild Israel’s political, security and democratic backbone, sharply criticizing the current right-wing government as “anti-Zionist and anti-democratic.”
He said the only viable path forward includes ending the war against Hamas, securing the return of the hostages held in Gaza, and pursuing a clear diplomatic horizon regarding the Palestinians.
Golan also stressed a broader united front, saying: “We — The Democrats, Lapid, Gantz, [Gadi] Eisenkot, [Avigdor] Liberman, and [Naftali] Bennett, once he officially joins [the race] — we are all on the same side. This is our common ground. This is the next unity government.”
Bennett, who led the now-defunct right-wing Yamina party, has been out of office since the 2022 collapse of his diverse coalition government, which in 2021 ousted Netanyahu from the premiership after 12 consecutive years.
Following the outbreak of the war in Gaza, Bennett has risen in polls and is seen as a leading candidate in any new election. He finally gave credence to the rumors last month when he announced the formation of a new political party under the temporary name “Bennett 2026.”
‘He knows he’s harming the chances of winning’
A statement attributed to officials close to Lapid, however, pushed back against Golan’s call, saying a merger would only serve to benefit Netanyahu.
“It’s time for Yair Golan to stop helping Netanyahu with harmful announcements,” the statement, reported by Hebrew media outlets, said.
“He knows he’s harming the chances of winning the election. He has been presented with the polls that prove such a union only makes the bloc smaller and returns voters to Netanyahu. It isn’t clear why he is insisting on making himself the right’s biggest asset just for headlines.”
In turn, a statement attributed to officials close to Golan retorted that “it’s high time for us to stop running after polls and start forming a moral and ideological backbone.”
The Golan-linked statement added that previous elections saw center-left politicians act per strategists’ analyses and opinion surveys, only to end up losing the vote.
In the last elections, in 2022, the Labor party’s decision not to join forces with fellow left-wing party Meretz — of which Golan later took the helm, merging the two parties — was seen as contributing to Meretz’s failure to enter the Knesset, to the detriment of the anti-Netanyahu bloc.
The back-and-forth Thursday came after Golan last week drew headlines and outcry when he said in an interview, while railing against the government, that Israel was not “acting like a sane country,” and that “a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.”
Following the comments — and as Golan made clarifying remarks, in which he said Israel was “certainly” not killing babies as a hobby — the left-wing leader, who famously went into battle of his own volition on October 7, was banned from the reserves and forbidden from wearing a military uniform.
On Tuesday, he was heckled — to the expressed pleasure of some in the government — with shouts of “traitor!”. Golan said he is the object of incitement “from above,” blaming the prime minister and comparing the rhetoric against him to the language used in the lead-up to the late premier Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination.
Sam Sokol and Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report.
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