Former prime minister Naftali Bennett deserves genuine credit for his behind-the-scenes efforts to bring Israel’s centrist leaders together. The reports of negotiations involving opposition leader Yair Lapid, Gadi Eisenkot, Avigdor Liberman, and Benny Gantz about forming a single centrist Zionist party reflect something Israelis have long yearned for: unity beyond ego and a political force strong enough to balance between the ideological extremes tearing the country apart.
Israelis are exhausted by division and paralysis. The idea of a broad centrist Zionist alliance is refreshing and speaks to a deep national hunger for sanity, stability, and leadership that heals rather than inflames. If successful, such a unification could finally provide a force capable of ending the cycle of division that has defined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long rule.
Bennett proved in the past that coalition-building across divides is possible. His current effort to stitch together a centrist front is bold and, in today’s fractured political landscape, admirable.
What would the coalition offer?
Let us be clear, unity just as a slogan is worthless. Israelis deserve to hear what this alliance actually stands for, not just what it stands against, because “Not Bibi” is not a platform. It is a slogan, and slogans are meaningless.
Bennett, Lapid, Eisenkot, Liberman, and Gantz are not fresh faces. They are not bold outsiders. They are the ultimate insiders. These people have served in every major position in the government and the IDF. Their résumés are long, their experience undeniable. However, let’s be honest: If their experience alone were enough, Israel would not be where it is today. Experience is not a vision.
We as a nation must ask this new potential alliance some hard questions and demand that they answer with specific plans, not just slogans. What exactly are they offering this time around?
What economic reforms will they push to lower the suffocating cost of living? What concrete steps will they take to bring down housing prices, especially for the generation of reservists who dropped everything on October 7 and continue to do so? What is their plan for constructive judicial reform that creates proper checks and balances instead of chaos?
What is their plan to incorporate the haredim (ultra-Orthodox) into the army – not with slogans but details of a serious plan that is developed together with the haredi leadership? What will they do to reform the Chief Rabbinate so that it again functions as a Zionist institution? Perhaps most urgently, what is their plan to reform the IDF after October 7 exposed failures at every level?
Security is a crucial issue
On security, the issue is possibly most acute. Eisenkot, often cast today as a voice of maturity, cannot evade scrutiny. As a recent IDF chief of staff, he appointed many of the very officers who failed in their duties leading up to the horrors of October 7.
That day was not simply a lapse of intelligence; it was a systemic failure of leadership and preparedness. It exposed the broken group-think mentality that permeated the high ranks of the IDF since the signing of the Oslo Accords and the Gaza Disengagement.
Eisenkot, by virtue of his role in shaping the IDF’s upper command, cannot escape partial responsibility for our current situation. Liberman, Bennett, Gantz, and Lapid, in one way or another, bought into the illusion that Hamas could be “managed.” That illusion died. Should the same people who presided over failure now be trusted as the ones to fix it?
Yitzhak Rabin once said (during the height of the Knesset’s debate on the Oslo Accords) that “a majority of one is a majority.” However, the hard truth of Israeli politics is that a government with a slim majority is not enough to hold this fractured nation together.
We have seen the cost of narrow majorities making major policy changes: Oslo; the Gaza Disengagement; and the judicial reform. If Bennett and his allies think that Israel’s future can be built on yet another razor-thin majority that excludes Likud, they have learned nothing from our history. All they will have done is create another narrow government dressed up as a centrist alternative.
Even more concerning are whispers of Yair Golan joining this proposed centrist alliance. Golan is a divisive figure who recently maligned the IDF in the middle of the war. He has shown open hostility toward settlers, religious communities, and continues to recycle the same failed “peace process” dogmas that brought disaster in the past.
Is this really a “unifying” figure the centrist Zionist coalition should embrace? Or is it proof that this alliance risks being nothing more than a political convenience for those obsessed with replacing Netanyahu?
True unity will only be achieved if we finally change the political discourse. We need leaders interested in creating a culture of compromise, responsibility, and courage, not another endless cycle of ego-driven battles that leave the country weaker and divided.
A centrist Zionist alliance could be the answer to Israel’s political paralysis. But unless it answers the hard questions, unless it tells us not only who it is against but what it is for, it will become just another repackaged failure sold to a weary public.
Israelis cannot afford to be fooled again by familiar faces offering the same old policies just with different authors. October 7 taught us in blood what the cost of failed leadership looks like. We cannot afford any more failures.
The writer is the managing partner of Dekel Capital Management, a resident of Beit Shemesh, a proud oleh who made aliyah 27 years ago, and prides himself on always feeling like a new oleh. He is an avid Zionist who cares deeply about the future of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.