‘This feeling is called hope’: Old-new partners Bennett and Lapid try to oust Netanyahu again |
Launching their “Together” election alliance on Sunday night, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid unsurprisingly both highlighted the key shared positions that Bennett asserted will guarantee them a “giant victory” over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in general elections scheduled for October.
Bennett, in his opening remarks, vowed to establish a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the Hamas invasion and massacre of October 7, 2023 — the powerhouse independent probe rejected by Netanyahu and supported by 60 percent or more of the Israeli public.
He promised to pass legislation requiring military service for all, and thus to reduce the burden on Israel’s exhausted reservists — in sharp contrast to the Netanyahu government’s unequal, undemocratic and hugely unpopular exclusion from the draft of most ultra-Orthodox young men.
Lapid, in his prepared statement, also vowed to draft the Haredim, and to tackle soaring crime, bring down the cost of living, and reform the education system.
What was less predictable, however, was the ease and confidence with which they acknowledged their markedly different positions on the political spectrum.
They’ve overcome those differences before, of course, when they formed a joint coalition after the 2021 elections, under which first Bennett and then Lapid served as prime minister.
But that was a post-election partnership that represented the only means by which either, indeed both, could attain the leadership of Israel — albeit briefly, as it turned out. Sunday night’s alliance is a pre-election choice, and the old-new partners made a virtue of their differences.
Bennett readily acknowledged that he and Lapid “have different views,” and declared himself a man of the right — a “right-wing, liberal, Zionist” as he put it. Lapid spoke for his centrist constituency, explaining that........