Eisenkot-Liberman merger would be biggest faction, could boost opposition – survey

Polls essentially unchanged since last week, with Zman showing Zionist opposition with narrow majority; Reservists’ Hendel reportedly in touch with Gantz about joint run

If elections were held today, and Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party were to partner with hawkish Yisrael Beytenu, they would together form the largest faction in the Knesset, with 26 of its 120 seats, according to a poll conducted this week by Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site.

A Channel 12 poll, conducted on Thursday, found that a Yashar-Yisrael Beytenu union would gain one seat for the Zionist opposition bloc, granting it a total of 60 seats, as opposed to 59 with the parties separate.

According to the Zman poll, the Zionist opposition — defined as those parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but not including ultra-Orthodox and Arab parties — would reach 61 either way. The current coalition would win 50, and Arab-majority parties the remaining nine.

According to Zman, if elections were held today, without the merger, the “Together” party, led by Bennett and including Opposition Leader Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party, would win 26 seats, as would Netanyahu’s Likud.

Yashar would win 14 seats, while Yisrael Beytenu, led by Avigdor Liberman, would win nine, and Yair Golan’s left-wing The Democrats would win eight. A joint Yisrael Beytenu-Yashar slate would win 26 seats.

Blue and White, the centrist party led by former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, would win four seats; Gantz has said that his party would prefer to join a government with the anti-Netanyahu bloc, but would sit with Netanyahu rather than force another round of elections.

The pro-Netanyahu bloc, composed of parties that are currently in the government, would win 50 seats, according to Zman. Five of the remaining seats would go to Ra’am — an Islamist faction led by Mansour Abbas — and the last four would go to anti-Zionist, Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al.

Among parties currently in the coalition, following Likud’s 26 seats, the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas party would win nine seats, and its Ashkenazi counterpart, United Torah Judaism, would win eight. Far-right Otzma Yehudit, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, would win seven seats.

The Zman poll was conducted May 6-7 on a representative sample of 500 Jewish and Arab adults, with a margin of error of 4.4%.

Channel 12’s results had a slightly different distribution of seats — most notably, the Reservists party, led by Yoav Hendel and former Blue and White MK Chili Tropper, would pass the minimal threshold and win five seats.

The nascent faction has usually failed to win any seats in weekly polls, prompting speculation that it may ultimately merge with Blue and White, which has also hovered around the 3.25% threshold.

According to Channel 12, Tropper and Gantz were in contact about running together before Tropper quit Blue and White this week. He was the fourth faction lawmaker to depart in the past year, following a series of exits by senior lawmakers who later joined Yashar.

Those contacts did not come to fruition, but haven’t been abandoned entirely, according to the network.

Channel 12 also reported that Hendel and Tropper have been in contact with HaRivon HaRevi’i (“The Fourth Quarter”), a grassroots organization that describes its aim as establishing a government of unity and generating policy proposals based on broad public consensus.

Elections must take place by October 2026. Polls have consistently shown Netanyahu’s bloc failing to reach a majority, and the Zionist opposition hovering around 60 seats.

The premier’s campaign against Bennett, generally considered his most formidable opponent, has largely focused on the ex-prime minister’s inclusion of Ra’am as part of his 2021-2022 government, which was also led by Lapid in a rotation agreement. That line of attack has ramped up since Bennett and Lapid joined forces again.

Among the Zionist opposition, there is a split on whether to partner with the Islamist faction rather than move to new elections. Golan, of The Democrats, has called on the bloc to do so, while others have said they would not, or have avoided answering outright.

Gantz, meanwhile, has drawn ire for saying he’d be open to partnering with Netanyahu. He has noted that when centrist parties refused to sit with the premier in 2022, it resulted in the current government, which is dependent on far-right elements previously shunned by mainstream parties.