JOINING FORCES ONCE MORE
Bennett and Lapid have joined forces before, putting an end to Netanyahu’s successive 12-year tenure in a 2021 election, only to form a coalition government that with a thin majority and deeply divided over major issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, survived barely 18 months.
Their coalition included for the first time in Israel’s history a party drawn from the country’s Arab minority – Palestinian by heritage, Israeli by citizenship – the United Arab List (UAL).
Before that the duo muscled their way into his 2013 coalition government in a move that left Netanyahu’s traditional ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies out.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, made a comeback when he won the November 2022 election and formed the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.
But Hamas’ 2023 attack on southern Israel, which plunged the Middle East into turmoil and saw Israel fighting on multiple fronts, left Netanyahu’s security credentials in tatters and polls since then have predicted that he will lose the next election, due by the end of October.