Five politicians drawn from across the opposition spectrum put their names to a mutual non-aggression agreement on 26 September, aiming to shift the balance of power away from Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the 27 October vote. Held at Yair Lapid's Tel Aviv residence, the gathering included Naftali Bennett — heading Beyachad — alongside Gadi Eisenkot, who leads the newly formed Yashar party after serving as military chief of staff, as well as Yair Golan of the Democrats and Avigdor Lieberman, representing Yisrael Beiteinu.
Broadcasting coverage of the talks indicated that the five parties concluded an extended round of negotiations by putting their names to a shared statement — one acknowledging their ideological differences while placing governmental formation, framed around national recovery and rebuilding, at the top of their collective agenda. The document characterised the prospective arrangement as both principled and rooted in Zionist values. No answers had surfaced regarding how long such a coalition might hold together, where it would diverge from the current administration on policy, or which of the five leaders would stand in line for the prime ministerial post.
Lieberman had previously put forward the claim that Eisenkot was pursuing a back-channel arrangement with Netanyahu. Broadcasting coverage of the coalition indicated that, with Golan as an exception, its members tend to align on a hawkish stance toward defence matters and the ongoing dispute with Palestinians. Neither party has formally backed the creation of a Palestinian state, though one of the two treats the idea as a possibility worth keeping alive over time. Golan and the others involved have not taken the position that the military campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide, nor that war crimes have been carried out.
By 27 September 2026, Gaza's Health Ministry had recorded more than 74,000 Palestinian deaths in the territory. Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow at King's College London who analyses Israeli affairs, described the leading opposition figures — among them Bennett, Lieberman, and Eisenkot — as politicians whose positions sit firmly within a conservative tradition, noting they had not engaged with Palestinian statehood aspirations as a core policy matter. Bregman drew a parallel with Netanyahu while observing that they operated without the corruption proceedings or the political alliances with figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich that have defined Netanyahu's tenure, adding that, in his view, the Israeli electorate as a whole leans toward the political right.
Eisenkot, 66, is widely associated with the Dahiyeh Doctrine, a military strategy he is said to have outlined in 2008 that calls for the use of force well beyond what an adversary deploys, including the targeting of civilian infrastructure, in operations against armed groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. A tenure as chief of staff ran from 2015 through 2019, after which he entered electoral politics in 2022 through Benny Gantz's National Unity alliance, subsequently taking a seat in Netanyahu's war cabinet following the attacks of 7 October 2023.
Two of his nephews lost their lives — one in November 2024, the other in December 2023 — and that same month in 2023 also claimed his 25-year-old son Gal. His departure from the war cabinet alongside Gantz came in June 2024, with Netanyahu's reported absence of any strategy for ending the conflict cited as the reason. A year later, he established Yashar — a political party resting on three core commitments: governance run along professional lines, conscription broadened to include ultra-Orthodox citizens on the same terms as everyone else, and a state-led independent investigation into the failures surrounding 7 October.
His objections have centred on the degree to which the government relies on the United States to pursue its military objectives, leaving the underlying goals of that campaign unexamined. In September 2026, he told reporters that the US-brokered negotiations with Iran were producing an arrangement that, in his view, diverged from what he considered Israeli priorities, and he separately took issue with Washington's constraints on Israeli operations in Lebanon. During a 26 September television interview, he stated that the United Arab List (Ra'am) would have no place in a coalition he leads, pointing to a precondition — recognition of Israel as a Jewish state — that he described as one no Arab party would meet.
Formation of the Beyachad joint list, disclosed in April 2026, placed Bennett — then 54 — at the top of the ticket, with Lapid, aged 62, occupying the second slot on the roster. A shared governing arrangement between the two men ran for 18 months, spanning 2021 into 2022. Lapid has characterised Bennett as a right-wing politician who nonetheless operates with honesty — a view that reflects Lapid's own assessment — and both men have placed little emphasis on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or on backing the creation of a Palestinian state. Bennett later characterised Ra'am's inclusion in that coalition as a broken promise to the electorate.
Lapid has repeatedly taken aim at how Israel's conduct in Gaza and the broader region is perceived abroad, while his commentary has largely left the underlying policy rationale unexamined. On the conflict with Iran, Bennett has taken a notably more assertive public stance, and he voiced approval of the security services following their September 2025 operation in Doha that targeted senior Hamas figures. One member of Qatar's security personnel lost their life in the course of that operation. The two figures have aligned on a position that any future cabinet draw exclusively from Zionist parties, with no role for Arab-affiliated lists in forming a governing coalition.
Yisrael Beiteinu took shape in 1999 under Lieberman's direction, with the 68-year-old building the party around Russian-speaking immigrants who leaned toward the political right. Having previously aligned himself with Netanyahu, he now states he will not serve under him and draws a firm line against joining any coalition that includes ultra-Orthodox parties or depends on parties he characterises as opposed to Zionism. His stance against a minority government arrangement has, according to reports, positioned him as a potential barrier to Eisenkot securing the bloc's nomination for prime minister.
A stance he had first put forward during his time as defence minister in 2018 — that no person living in Gaza could be regarded as a civilian — resurfaced in addresses he gave in November 2023. At the Karem Abu Salem crossing in February 2026, he put forward the claim that the government was directing money to Hamas by way of the limited quantities of aid permitted through into the territory. In February 2025, he took issue with Netanyahu's decision to offer Qatar an apology over the Doha strike, contending that any such acknowledgement was properly owed to the people of Israel rather than a foreign government.
Speaking to the Jerusalem Post in March 2026, Lieberman argued that any future military action in Lebanon confined to border manoeuvres or a security zone would amount to a fundamental strategic error. Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, a researcher at Atlas Global Strategies, contended that Lieberman's position within the bloc was untenable, pointing to what he described as the politician's antagonism toward Netanyahu as the underlying factor. His support among voters from the former Soviet states has held firm, and a track record of operating without factional ties has earned him standing beyond that core constituency. A return to Netanyahu's bloc has not been ruled out by some political analysts.
Of the five candidates, Golan — aged 64 — is the only one whose political background sits within the Zionist left, and the only one who has indicated an openness to governing in partnership with Palestinian parties. Accounts at the time placed him among those who travelled south on 7 October 2023 to assist in repelling the assault, with his background spanning the rank of retired major-general and a prior posting as deputy chief of staff. Two Israeli political parties — Labor and Meretz — joined forces in 2024 to establish a single entity operating under the Democrats banner.
Of those involved, he has put forward the sharpest challenge to the government's stated war objectives, contending that battlefield advances are being lost in the absence of any coherent diplomatic or political framework to support them. In May 2025, he told an audience that a country of sound mind would not treat the killing of infants as routine practice, and went on to accuse government ministers of taking satisfaction in the deprivation of food to Palestinian children — remarks he subsequently walked back following pushback at home.
Golan, speaking in October 2026, described the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the outset of the February 2026 conflict between the US and Israel as an error in judgement — not on moral grounds, he clarified, but on the basis that it did not advance the interests of Israel. He also pointed to what he characterised as positive outcomes from the twelve-day military confrontation with Iran in 2025. Golan's decision to support the removal of Sami Abu Shehadeh from Balad's candidate list — a move tied to an article Abu Shehadeh had authored about the events of 7 October, which led to his exclusion in September — placed him in tension with the Joint List and drew objections from various commentators, notwithstanding his broader record of engagement with Palestinian political factions.
Roi Zur, a researcher in Israeli politics based at the University of Essex, contended that any workable governing coalition would need to bring together both Golan and Lieberman — despite the differences between them on defence policy — given that the two share a common front against Netanyahu, a preference for curtailing the state's religious influence, and a stance that ultra-Orthodox men ought to bear the same military obligations as other citizens.
