Opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) and former MK Gadi Eisenkot agreed to convene a meeting next week with leaders of the “Change Bloc” to begin formulating basic principles for the next government, Lapid’s office shared on Monday.
The next elections are currently scheduled for October 2026. Those included to be part of “Change Bloc” were Lapid, Eisenkot, former prime minister Naftali Bennett, Yisrael Beytenu head MK Avigdor Liberman, Blue and White head MK Benny Gantz, and The Democrats head Yair Golan.
The goal of the meeting would be to “deepen coordination and begin formulating the basic principles for the next government. This comes following discussions and meetings that have taken place in recent days,” the statement from Lapid’s office said.
Liberman expressed on Monday morning that “the Zionist bloc must present a unified team of experienced people who will work together for the citizens of Israel,” which would go against "a failed prime minister who only cares about himself."
“The truly important question is not which party will be the largest, but how the Zionist parties together reach 63 seats,” Liberman added.
Liberman had initially called on Lapid to set a meeting between the party heads for the purpose of setting the guidelines in an official letter in August.
Bennet proposed a merger to both Eisenkot and Liberman
There have been circulating reports that Bennett proposed a merger to both Eisenkot and Liberman, with the intention of creating a large party under Bennett’s leadership.
Bennett would want the merger to be approved within a few weeks or a month to signal to the Israeli public that the united party could be an alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership in the next elections, KAN News reported on Sunday.
Liberman had told Bennett that he would make the decision regarding the merger closer to the election, while Eisenkot responded by saying he would examine the idea later, as per KAN.
The report said that Eisenkot expressed concerns to those in his circle that an early merger could end up serving Netanyahu and would, therefore, backfire on the party.
Lapid said that only his party would be able to successfully form a government during a Yesh Atid press conference last week.
He stated that Bennett, Liberman, Eisenkot, and Golan had all declared "that they will be prime minister, or at the very least defense minister.”
“That is legitimate, I have no problem with people having ambitions, but someone also needs to know how to take all those forces and build a government out of them,” Lapid continued.
There have been multiple one-on-one meetings between members of the "Change Bloc" to discuss the creation of a new government, with each expressing the shared aim of replacing the current Netanyahu government.
Eisenkot held a separate meeting with former prime minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday evening, in which the two said they had discussed creating a new leadership in Israel.
There were no publications that Gantz attended any of these meetings until now.
Eisenkot had served as the number two in Gantz's party before he announced in late June that he was leaving Blue and White and resigning from the Knesset.
Eisenkot clashed with Gantz on Thursday, calling on him to step down should his party remain close to the electoral threshold in an interview with Army Radio.
Before the current Netanyahu government, Bennett and Lapid had formed a national unity government in June 2021.
During that time, and as per a coalition agreement, Bennett served as prime minister from June 2021 until July 2022, with Lapid succeeding him until the government was dissolved in December 2022.
The Ra’am Party joined the coalition during the Bennett-Lapid government, marking the first time an Arab party was a formal member of a governing coalition.
There was no mention of any Arab parties being part of the “change bloc” meeting. Negotiations continue to take place to reestablish the Joint List bloc, consisting of the four Arab parties Ra’am (United Arab List), Hadash, Ta’al, and Balad.