Israel's Opposition Leaders Join Forces to Try to Unseat Netanyahu

Five Israeli opposition leaders signed a non-aggression pact on September 26, aiming to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the October 27 election. But observers say the group largely shares right-wing positions and is not offering any substantive change on the Palestinian question.

At the Tel Aviv home of opposition leader Yair Lapid, the participants included Lapid; former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, co-leader of the Beyachad slate; former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the new Yashar party; Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party; and Avigdor Liberman, head of Yisrael Beiteinu.

In a statement of principles released after a meeting that ran for several hours, the leaders said: "Despite the ideological differences between us, the establishment of a statesmanlike Zionist government, dedicated to repair and reconstruction, is our overarching shared goal."

Whether they will deliver meaningful change in either substance or style, and which of them would lead a future coalition, remains an open question.

According to analysts, with the exception of Golan, all the other leaders take a broadly right-wing line on Israel's challenges. None has committed to establishing a Palestinian state; only the Democrats recognize that as a distant, unspecified goal. Nor does anyone, including Golan, accept that Israel's war in Gaza amounts to genocide or has involved war crimes in killing more than 74,000 people. None questions Israel's military actions against Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Qatar and Iran, and they mostly criticize only how those actions affect how Israel is seen internationally.

"The dominant forces in the opposition — Bennett, Liberman, Eisenkot — represent right-wing politics," said Ahron Bregman, an Israel analyst and senior fellow at King's College London. "They are unwilling to touch the real, fundamental issue at the center of everything: the Palestinian issue and the Palestinians' aspirations for independence." He likened them to Netanyahu, but without the corruption charges and without backing for far-right figures such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. "Israel as a whole is a right-wing country," Bregman added.

Below are the main opposition figures and the positions of the parties they lead.

Gadi Eisenkot – Yashar party

Credited as the originator of the 2008 Dahiyeh Doctrine, which involved the use of "disproportionate force" and large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure against groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, Eisenkot served as Israel's military chief of staff from 2015 to 2019.

Eisenkot, 66, entered politics in 2022 within former Defense Minister Benny Gantz's National Unity alliance, then joined the war cabinet Netanyahu formed after the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. In December that year, his son Gal, 25, and two of his nephews were killed while fighting in Gaza — a loss commentators say helps him connect with voters who feel marked by the war.

In June 2024, he left the war cabinet alongside Gantz, accusing Netanyahu of lacking a strategy to end the war. A year later, Eisenkot founded the center-right Yashar (Straight/Honest) party, advocating a professional government, military service for everyone — including ultra-Orthodox Jews — and a state commission of inquiry into the failures before October 7.

Though known for being vague on many of Israel's foreign policy positions, he has criticized the government's reliance on the United States to achieve its war goals, without questioning those goals themselves. In June, he described Washington-mediated talks with Tehran to end the war against Iran as "a deal taking shape in a faraway place, remote from Israel's interests"; the same month, he criticized U.S. restrictions on Israel's freedom of action in Lebanon.

Eisenkot has ruled out bringing the United Arab List (Ra'am) into a post-election coalition. In an interview with Channel 12 on September 26, he said no Arab party accepts his conditions, including recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid – Beyachad party

Beyachad (Together) is a joint slate announced by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid in April 2026. The two served as prime minister for a combined 18 months during 2021-2022, between Netanyahu's terms.

Bennett, 54, a longtime supporter of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, heads the list; Lapid, 62, founder of the center-right Yesh Atid party, is second. Lapid has called his partner "a right-wing politician, but an honest one." Neither prioritizes resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or supports a Palestinian state. Although their 2021 coalition included Ra'am, Bennett acknowledged this broke an election pledge.

Lapid is one of Israel's most vocal critics of how military actions in Gaza and strikes on neighboring countries are perceived internationally, but he rarely questions the reasons behind those actions. Bennett, by contrast, is more outspoken in his hawkish views. A fervent supporter of the war against Iran, he also congratulated the Israeli military and security services over the September 2025 strike on Qatar's capital, Doha, which targeted senior Hamas leaders meeting to discuss a U.S. ceasefire proposal for Gaza. A Qatari security official was killed in the attack, which drew widespread regional and international condemnation.

The two now aim for a government made up only of Zionist parties, also ruling out reliance on Arab parties.

Avigdor Liberman – Yisrael Beiteinu party

The most hawkish voice at the meeting at Lapid's home, Liberman, 68, founded Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) in 1999 to represent right-leaning Russian-speaking immigrants.

Once a Netanyahu protégé, Liberman has ruled out serving under Netanyahu or joining a coalition with ultra-Orthodox parties or one relying on Arab parties — which he calls anti-Zionist. He also rejects a minority government, seen as the main obstacle preventing Eisenkot from becoming the bloc's candidate for prime minister.

In November 2023, Liberman repeated his 2018 statement, made while defense minister, that "there are no innocent people in Gaza." In February, he went to the Karem Abu Salem crossing (known to Israelis as Kerem Shalom) and accused Netanyahu's government of "funding Hamas" by allowing a minimal amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The Yisrael Beiteinu leader has been a consistent supporter of the war in Gaza and the military actions that followed. In September 2025, he and other Israeli politicians criticized Netanyahu over the Doha apology that the Trump administration forced on him over that month's strike, arguing the apology should have been directed at the Israeli public. Similarly, he opposed any restraint in the incursion into Lebanon, telling the Jerusalem Post in March: "If once again we conduct a limited campaign, a few moves near the border, maybe talk about a security zone, that is completely insane."

"Liberman does not belong in this bloc," said Israel analyst Shaiel Ben-Ephraim of Atlas Global Strategies, arguing that his main motivation is hostility toward Netanyahu. Still, according to Ben-Ephraim, Liberman "maintains a loyal base and is an important force in Israeli politics." His core voters are of former Soviet origin, but he has won broader trust through an independent image. Observers say he could return to Netanyahu's right-wing bloc.

Yair Golan – Democrats party

The only leader at the meeting from the Zionist left, and the only one willing to work with Palestinian parties, Golan heads the Democrats — a liberal party formed in 2024 from a merger of the Labor party and the secular social-democratic Meretz.

A retired major general and former deputy chief of staff, Golan, 64, was hailed at home for driving south during the Hamas-led attack in 2023 and helping repel the assault.

Golan is the only one among the many members of the anti-Netanyahu bloc to criticize the government's war goals, arguing that military achievements are being wasted without a coherent diplomatic and political strategy.

In May 2025, two years after the war in Gaza began, Golan caused controversy when he said at a news conference that "a healthy country does not kill children as a hobby," accusing ministers of celebrating the starvation of Palestinian children. He later retracted the remark after widespread criticism in Israel. In October, while praising the achievements of the previous year's 12-day war against Iran, he told party members that assassinating Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the start of the conflict was a "mistake." "Not because he doesn't deserve to die," he added, "but only because it did not serve the interests of the State of Israel."

Despite his willingness to work with Palestinian parties, in September Golan backed the removal of Sami Abu Shehadeh, leader of the Arab Balad party, from the electoral slate over an article about October 7, drawing criticism from the Joint List — the Arab-led alliance of Hadash, Ta'al and Balad — and from commentators.

Roi Zur, an expert on Israeli politics at the University of Essex, said that despite the ideological differences between Golan and Liberman on security and the conflict, "there will be no winning coalition without these two." He added that concerns about conflict between them misunderstand the issue, since both oppose Netanyahu, support secularization and strongly oppose military service exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox.