Analysis: Bennett-Lapid alliance attempt to unseat Israel’s Netanyahu

Bennett has gone further in making clear his attitude towards Palestinians. In October 2018, he said that if he were defence minister, he would authorise a “shoot-to-kill” policy against Palestinians attempting to cross the boundary between Gaza and Israel. When asked specifically whether this would include children, he replied: “They are not children – they are terrorists.”

And even the inclusivity of having a Palestinian party in the 2021-2022 government is being reversed: Bennett has made clear that he now only wants “Zionist” parties in government, excluding “Arab parties” comprised of Palestinian citizens of Israel – 20 percent of the country’s population.

“Look, this [the Netanyahu government] is the most extreme government you can imagine, and it may be – that if international pressure is there –  a Bennett-Lapid government might listen to it,’ Hassan Jabareen, the founder of Palestinian legal rights organisation Adalah, told Al Jazeera. “But by already saying that they won’t ally with any Arab party, they’ve delegitimised the Arab vote and legitimised the racism that Palestinians face every day.”

Down, not out

Bennett and Lapid hope that kind of attitude will win harden their nationalist credentials in a country that continues to attack its neighbours, and in which settler groups run wild in the occupied West Bank, attacking and killing Palestinians.

One of Netanyahu’s main strengths in Israel has been his nationalism, which has appealed to a population generally supportive of the war in Gaza, the occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land, and conflict with Lebanon and Iran – even if they appear to have slipped beyond his control.

Netanyahu’s soft underbelly, however, has been the multiple corruption charges he faces, and the related ongoing trial, increasing his desparation to stay in power in the hope that will protect him from justice.

But the corruption charges, along with his attempts to deflect from any responsibility for the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and his attempts to weaken the independence of the judiciary, have left many Israelis unsatisfied.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (centre) and his wife Sara (left) sit alongside Israel’s President Isaac Herzog as they attend a ceremony commemorating Israel’s Memorial Day [File: AFP]

“With Netanyahu, political resilience comes baked in,” Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flashenberg said, referencing the continuous controversies that have dogged the Israeli prime minister throughout his career. “My instinct is that he’ll still be prime minister after the elections. He’s nowhere near as popular as he was before October 7, but time and wars have gone some way to eclipsing that.”

It is also important not to read too much into the new alliance, Flashenberg added, not least before further polls and news of further alliances emerged. “This is more like the semifinal than the final,” he said. “We’re seeing who will lead the anti-Netanyahu bloc and, with Lapid joining Bennett, that looks to be clear. Now we have to wait on the others, such as [former chief of staff and Yashar party chairman Gadi] Eisenkot.”