Netanyahu targets opposition pact as five rival chiefs map out a joint campaign

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lashed out at opposition figures who have begun pooling their resources in a bid to unseat his government, days before voters head to the polls for the October 27 Knesset election. In his first public response to the accord, the Likud leader accused the newly aligned parties of harbouring designs that extend well beyond the five leaders who signed it.

The alliance was forged at a private gathering held at the Tel Aviv home of Yesh Atid chief Yair Lapid on Saturday evening, according to Israeli Channel 12, which reported that the five politicians spent the meeting mapping out a common strategy for the final stretch of the campaign. The timing of the meeting — just over a month before voting day — signals that long-rival factions on the centre and right of the Israeli spectrum have concluded that running separately is no longer a viable route to a governing majority.

Those who attended were Lapid, Naftali Bennett, the leader of Bennett 2026; Avigdor Lieberman, the head of Yisrael Beiteinu; Gadi Eisenkot, who leads Yashar; and Yair Golan, the Democrats leader. The gathering brought together figures who have spent much of the past two decades competing with one another for the same anti-Netanyahu vote, including a former prime minister and a former defence minister now running under new party banners.

Netanyahu's reaction focused on what he said was the real purpose of the cooperation. The prime minister claimed that Eisenkot, despite his comparatively hawkish reputation, would end up serving in a government built by Lapid, Golan, Bennett 2026, Yisrael Beiteinu and Arab parties. "Only a strong Likud will stop them," he wrote on X, urging supporters to rally behind his right-wing party. The post framed the alliance not as an anti-incumbent compact but as the embryo of a broader, unwanted governing arrangement.

To illustrate his point, Netanyahu shared an AI-altered image of the gathering in which two Arab political leaders had been inserted alongside the five signatories: United Arab List chief Mansour Abbas and Hadash-Ta'al leader Ahmad Tibi. The manoeuvre drew attention to the political sensitivities surrounding Israeli cooperation with Arab parties, and it sharpened the prime minister's warning about what a future opposition government might look like.

Lamid, for his part, published a photograph of the group together with a document setting out the principles guiding their coordination both up to and beyond election day. Under the text, each leader undertook to campaign within their own constituency to raise turnout and to reach out to a broad cross-section of society, with the stated objective of winning a majority and establishing a new government. Such pledges are designed to reassure voters that an opposition victory would produce a coherent administration rather than a loose patchwork of competing demands.

Three joint working groups are to be created within 48 hours, a detail that suggests the parties want the machinery of cooperation visibly operating well before the campaign heats up. The first will concentrate on mobilising supporters for the bloc and on what the leaders termed "safeguarding the integrity of the election" — language that echoes the controversies, disputes and accusations that have surrounded recent Israeli electoral processes.

The second group has the heaviest agenda, tasked with drafting the basic guidelines of the government the opposition wants to build. Its stated priorities include establishing an official commission of inquiry into the attacks of October 7, 2023, and beginning work on a new constitution. Both commitments point to the unresolved questions surrounding the security war and the constitutional overhaul that supporters have long demanded.

The third group will handle communications, coordinating media activity and attempting to offset what the document describes as "fake news and smear campaigns". Sharing a single campaign voice is likely to matter in a fragmented race, where the ruling coalition and its allies are already targeting opposition figures on air and online.

Bennett, who returned to frontline politics after a period outside government, struck an optimistic note. "I am filled with hope again tonight. I am confident that we can win 63 seats and work together to fix Israel," he wrote in a statement on X. "We have agreed to fully cooperate until the election, on election day, and after the election, with the aim of forming a government that will fix Israel." The 63-seat figure sets out the scale of ambition implied by the pact.

The initiative also lands in a highly unsettled political environment. Alongside the coordination effort, Israeli authorities have moved to bar the principal Arab lists from the October ballot, a move those parties have denounced — a decision that complicates Netanyahu's own rhetorical attack on prospective cooperation with Arab politicians. Meanwhile, signs of pressure from abroad have had limited effect on the domestic electorate, with criticism of Western sanctions reportedly failing to sway voters.

For the Likud, the challenge now is to turn the opposition's visible unity back into an argument about its divisions. Netanyahu's counter-messaging — a warning that the alliance points to a government aligned with Arab parties — suggests the prime minister is betting that fear of the alternative will mobilise his base more effectively than policy arguments about turnout or coalition arithmetic.

Whether the pact translates into votes remains the open question. Israeli elections turn on small margins, and five parties with differing priorities, ideological outlooks and leadership styles have rarely sustained formal arrangements for long. But the 48-hour deadline for the working groups gives the new alignment a chance to demonstrate that this particular merger is more than a photo opportunity. The first test will come when the bloc has to speak with one voice, and when Netanyahu decides how hard to push the divisions he hopes remain buried inside it.