Is Bennett-Lapid union a gamechanger in Israel’s fall election?

The first polls conducted after two former Israeli prime ministers announced they will be running on a joint ticket give mixed signals on whether the alliance is a game-changer that could help unseat Netanyahu.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

On Sunday, two former Israeli prime ministers announced the formation of a joint ticket for the Knesset, raising hopes among supporters of the opposition that this year’s election will mark the end of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s term as head of Israel’s government.

The announcement was made six months before the deadline for holding new elections – October 27 – and against the backdrop of a collapsing ceasefire in Lebanon, an uncertain truce with Iran, and an unresolved war in Gaza, with the US-backed peace plan left in limbo following months of international focus on Iran.

Will war-weary Israelis turn to former premiers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, with their new “Together” party, or will Netanyahu and his right-wing, religious coalition allies again prevail?

Two snap polls released immediately after Sunday’s announcement give differing answers.

The first to be published, a Maariv poll conducted by Menachem Lazar, showed that a broad center-left alliance has the potential to become by far the largest party in the Knesset.

A union of Bennett, Lapid, and former IDF chief of staff and former minister Gadi Eisenkot would win 39 seats if new elections were held today, the poll found.

The Likud, currently the largest faction in the Knesset, would receive just 26 seats.

However, the poll was conducted on Friday, two days before Sunday’s bombshell announcement.

While the survey asked respondents how they would vote if Bennett, Lapid, and Eisenkot all formed a united front against the Netanyahu coalition, Eisenkot has thus far refused to join a joint ticket.

Furthermore, while a grand union of opposition factions would give the joint ticket a massive advantage in a head-to-head race with the Likud, Israeli governments are formed on the basis of governing coalitions with a majority in the 120-member Knesset.

The Maariv poll found that if new elections were held today, the Bennett-Lapid-Eisenkot union and its allies would receive 60 seats – one short of an absolute majority – forcing Bennett to turn once again to the Knesset’s anti-Zionist Arab parties to cobble together a coalition.

In fact, the formation of a Bennett-Lapid-Eisenkot alliance would actually diminish the size of their potential coalition overall, with the Jewish parties opposed to Netanyahu receiving 61 seats if no alliance were formed.

A second poll, conducted by Netanyahu’s longtime pollster, Shlomo Filber, and published by the right-leaning Channel 14, found that the new “Together” ticket does close the gap between the left and the right – but not by much.

Without the alliance, the Netanyahu coalition would win 66 seats, the poll found, compared to 64 seats after the Bennett-Lapid alliance was formed.

Despite this net loss of two seats for the right-wing bloc, the Likud remains the largest faction, according to Filber, with 34 seats, compared to 20 for the “Together” list.

Eisenkot received nine seats in the poll, while a potential joint Arab ticket won 11 seats.