With elections due by October, yet expected sooner, as the haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) conscription issue threatens the coalition’s survival, the country is already in election mode.
How does this manifest? In MKs causing a ruckus in committee meetings, and in failing to advance legislation while generating online clips and attention-grabbers instead.
Take Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who raised the tax-free limit on imported goods from $75 to $150. This is a move that makes online shopping for Israelis more attractive, boosts global platforms like AliExpress and Amazon, and hurts local shops.
The country shifting into election mode is also indicated in the sudden burst of talk about political mergers.
Discussions resurfaced last week about merging the four Arab political parties. These parties run a wide ideological gamut from Balad, a secular Palestinian nationalist party that explicitly opposes Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, to Ra’am. This Islamist party accepts Israel’s right to exist and seeks to work within the system to improve conditions for Arab citizens.
The ideological and religious gaps within these four parties are vast. A comparable scenario on the Jewish political map would be United Torah Judaism, Likud, Yesh Atid, and the Democrats running together on a single slate.
Nevertheless, there is a straightforward rationale behind such a merger: maximizing votes. When the Arab parties first united in 2013, they won 13 seats. After splitting, they reunited again in 2020 and won 15 seats – the highest number ever achieved by Arab parties. In the most recent election, they fractured once more and won a combined total of 10 seats.
Alongside this, a more ideologically coherent merger is being floated among Jewish parties.
Gadi Eisenkot proposes 'big tent' party
Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot raised the idea last week of forming a broad, “big tent” party with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and Naftali Bennett’s new party that would merge the center, the soft Left, and the soft Right.
The aim is to shake up a political landscape that, as reflected in current polling, appears headed once again toward the same deadlock that paralyzed the country and led to five elections between 2019 and 2022.
Unlike the proposed merger of Arab parties, where ideological differences are profound and fundamental, discerning meaningful ideological distinctions among these three Jewish parties often requires a magnifying glass.
Such a union aims to rally voters around a large centrist force, recalling the days when Israeli politics were led by parties winning 40 seats – a milestone last seen in 1992, when Labor won 44 and Likud 32. In 1988, the Likud won 40 and Labor, 39.
Those outcomes reflected a period when clear ideological differences existed between Labor and Likud on core economic, peace, and security issues. Over time, however, those differences steadily narrowed.
Today, they have boiled down to the point where what separates the two main blocs is no longer a substantive disagreement over Palestinian statehood or economic policy, but rather one figure: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
While the prospective merger of these three parties is clearly aimed at unseating Netanyahu, the true challenge – and the opportunity – is to reintroduce ideology into the political discourse. A merger can only reshape Israeli politics if it offers real, substantive alternatives rather than mere opposition.
Israel does not need another campaign focused solely on criticizing Netanyahu and his government. Voters deserve a clear articulation of what a new political force would do differently and better.
It is insufficient to say that giving Qatar or Turkey a foothold in Gaza through US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace would be a disaster; suggesting an alternative is necessary.
Lay out, in detail, your vision for Gaza’s “day after.” Explain how you would improve Israel’s standing abroad. Do not limit the message to what the current government should not have done; explain clearly what you would do if entrusted with power.
In other words, run a campaign focused on offering real ideas and alternatives. That is how political movements grow and how politics regain substance.
If, however, the only tangible outcome of this merger is tighter coordination of an anti-Netanyahu message, then not only is this new party unlikely to significantly expand the ranks of the center, it will also have squandered a rare, historic opportunity to reshape politics at a moment when the public deserves more than just another “anyone but Bibi” campaign.