Top centrist rivals unite for run against premier
JERUSALEM — Israel’s primary centrist challengers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday they were joining forces ahead of April elections — a dramatic move that shook up the country’s political system and created the first credible alternative to Netanyahu’s decade-long rule.
Retired military chief Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party, said they would present a joint list for the upcoming vote that “will constitute the new Israeli ruling party.” In a joint statement, the two said they were “motivated by national responsibility.”
“The new ruling party will bring forth a cadre of security and social leaders to ensure Israel’s security and to reconnect its people and heal the divide within Israeli society,” they said, in a dig at Netanyahu.
Recent polls suggest that together, Gantz and Lapid could surpass Netanyahu’s ruling Likud to become Israel’s largest faction after the April 9 vote. Under their unity arrangement, the two agreed to a rotation leadership should they come to power under which Gantz would first serve as prime minister and would then be replaced by Lapid after 2½ years.
Netanyahu, who is embroiled in multiple corruption allegations and faces a potential impending indictment, has taken a hard turn to the right in recent days to shore up his nationalistic base.
On Wednesday, he reached a preliminary election deal with two fringe religious-nationalist parties in a bid to unify his hard-line bloc.
Among the prominent figures in the joint Jewish Home-Jewish Power list are Bezalel Smotrich, a self-avowed “proud homophobe,” Itamar Ben Gvir, an attorney who has made a career defending radical Israeli settlers implicated in West Bank violence, and Benzi Gopstein, leader of an extremist anti-assimilation group.