At new party’s first rally, Bennett vows to ‘unite the nation’ and enact constitution

Former premier says Likud founders ‘rolling in their graves’ at what party has become under Netanyahu; Lapid: Merger with Bennett is about ‘restoring hope to the country’

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett vowed at his new Together alliance’s inaugural election rally on Tuesday that if elected premier he would enact a constitution for Israel and integrate the country’s disparate school systems in “the greatest social revolution since the state was founded.”

“This will bring us back from being tribes to being a nation,” the right-wing former premier told thousands of supporters at Tel Aviv’s Expo. “One nation – one constitution. One nation – one education. One nation – one state.”

“We’ll unite the nation — that’s my life’s mission,” said Bennett, who is the Zionist opposition’s lead candidate in the next elections.

Bennett said the constitution he enacts would be “in the spirit” of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which sets out principles for Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

While Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence pledged a constitution before the end of that year, political disagreements pushed the young country to instead adopt a system of quasi-constitutional “Basic Laws” that continues to this day.

Bennett was addressing what organizers estimated were 3,500 people who came to rally for Together, an alliance that the right-wing ex-premier launched on April 26 with Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid party, as a junior partner.

Together is running neck-and-neck with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud to be the largest party in the Knesset in the next elections, according to a poll last week by Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site. The poll also showed neither Bennett’s nor Netanyahu’s blocs would command a majority in parliament without support from the opposing bloc or from Arab parties, whom leaders of both blocs have rejected as potential coalition partners. The Bennett-led bloc has been polling at about 60 seats in the 120-member Knesset, just short of a majority, compared to the current coalition’s 50, with mainly Arab parties holding the balance.

Like its smaller allies in the Zionist opposition, Together rails against Netanyahu for seeking to codify exemptions from mandatory military service for Haredi yeshiva students and to avoid a state commission of inquiry into failures surrounding the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.

Bennett at the rally repeated his pledge that the first act of a government he leads would be to form such a commission.

He also vowed to “put an end to insularity” and unite the national school system, which currently has distinct secular, National Religious, ultra-Orthodox and Arab sub-systems.

“There will be one education system for the State of Israel,” Bennett said. “And all the students of Israel will know that we’re a Jewish and democratic state.”

Students will study a common curriculum of “Hebrew, English, mathematics, civics, Bible, Jewish heritage and Zionism,” he said.

“We’ll do something simple: We’ll stop funding schools that teach their kids, ‘We’ll die and won’t draft’,'” Bennett said, citing a common Haredi refrain against military service. “It will be the greatest social revolution since the state was founded.”

Bennett appeals to disenchanted Likud voters

The next elections are set to be held in October at the latest. Chances for an early election grew Tuesday after ultra-Orthodox lawmakers said they would vote to dissolve parliament because the coalition had failed to pass a law enshrining the decades-long Haredi exemption from military service.

Lapid generated intense applause at the Together rally after he declared that his parliamentary faction would bring a motion next week to dissolve the Knesset following the Haredi threats.

Bennett said the cracks that emerged in Netanyahu’s coalition showed “the draft-dodger alliance is collapsing” and accused Likud of having become a tool of the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism factions, to the detriment of Israel’s strained military.

“An alliance based on harming IDF soldiers is destined to collapse — that’s what you’re seeing right now,” Bennett said.

He added that “dissolving the Knesset early would be the only good thing this government has done for the people of Israel” after it “weakened the IDF and failed to wake up after October 7.”

Bennett claimed Netanyahu was rightly “hysterical” about losing voters to Together and that the incumbent “and his troupe are launching a swarm of ‘poison machine’ UAVs against anyone who expresses an opinion that does not serve his survival.”

That was “exactly how we got October 7” and was a “recipe for another disaster,” Bennett added.

He appealed to disenchanted Netanyahu supporters to topple the ruling party in the same way the Likud itself did when it first came to power in 1977, amid public anger at the ruling Alignment party over the shock Egyptian-Syrian assault that sparked the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

“Just as there was a historic upheaval after the failure of ’73, we will bring a historic upheaval after the failure of ’23. A revolution of hope,” Bennett said.

“So many good Likudniks are flocking to us now,” he claimed, “because the party that was once their home has become an empty shell without a soul. The name ‘Likud’ remains, but the values have vanished.”

Former Likud prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, as well as the party’s ideological forerunner Ze’ev Jabotinsky, “are rolling in their graves at the sight of the Kahanists, draft-dodgers and hacks who’ve taken over their party,” Bennett said. “Likud voters are fed up with it and are finding a home with us.”

He was referring to followers of the slain extremist rabbi Meir Kahane — leader of the proscribed far-right Kach movement — whose disciples include National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Shamir famously led a boycott of Kahane when the American-born rabbi served in parliament in 1984-1988 before being barred by the High Court from running.

Lapid: ‘We’re restoring hope’

Also speaking at the rally, Lapid said the decision to merge his Yesh Atid with Bennett’s tentative Bennett 2026 party was “not about politics,” but “about our soldiers in Lebanon and Gaza who expect more from us; about the next generation of young Israelis, who will be poorer than their parents; about the fact that it’s always darkest before dawn.”

“After four years where each of us felt alone… of rifts and division and disunity — we’re restoring hope to the country,” Lapid said.

“Bennett and I don’t pretend to agree on everything. He’s a right-winger, I’m a centrist. We have disagreements, and that’s good,” he said.

“For too long we’ve let our differences define us. This time, we decided to start with what unites us. Before all our disagreements, we are patriots, we are Zionists, we believe in a Jewish and democratic state, and we believe in each other,” said Lapid.

He added that Bennett “was an excellent prime minister” in the so-called “change government” they both led in 2021-2022, which comprised a diverse crew of anti-Netanyahu Zionist parties alongside Arab party Ra’am.

Bennett will be able to “lead a group of strong and good people who will bring the change that is as necessary as the air we breathe,” said Lapid.

“The current government tells you that what runs this country is ‘power, profit and prestige’,” Lapid said, paraphrasing a years-old comment by Likud minister Miki Zohar.

“We offer a different formula. What built our connection is trust, friendship, and values,” Lapid continued.

He said people “are wrong” to praise him for “putting ego aside” by joining forces with Bennett.

“I didn’t put my ego aside,” he said. “I put my heart in the right place — behind our soldiers, behind our children, behind people who work hard and can’t make ends meet, behind a friend with whom I believe we can bring change.”

Bennett, “the former and next prime minister of Israel,” is “someone who gives me hope,” Lapid added.