Those who want Benjamin Netanyahu gone have a problem: they can’t garner enough votes to ouster him. But what if a new option emerges in the upcoming elections? I explored this in my Shabbat column for Israel Hayom, an excerpt of which is below.
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A senior pollster recently suggested an interesting thesis to me: in the upcoming elections, for the first time in many years, a protest party in the style of the 2006 Pensioners’ Party (which, as you can guess, advocated for pensioners’ rights) will emerge, and it will shock the political system. It is not yet visible in the data, but he already sees the vacuum from which it will be born.
After all, if there are two conclusions the public drew from the October 7 massacre, they are that Israelis want a government that brings them both right-wing policies and change. Benjamin Netanyahu and his bloc offer right-wing politics, but certainly not change. Yair Lapid, Gadi Eisenkot, and Yair Golan offer change, but are definitely not right-wing. Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, offers a half right-wing government because of his centrist shift away from the right, and half change because he is a fairly seasoned politician, even if currently on a break.
The whole situation is akin to someone who is lactose intolerant but doesn’t realize, and lives in an era before supermarkets started stocking almond, soy, and rice milk. They stand in front of the shelf, facing one percent cow’s milk and three percent cow’s milk. “Which would you like?” the clerk asks. They hesitate because, in the end, they know that whatever they choose, their stomach will hurt afterward.
This is also the reason for the huge differences in polling results, which are unprecedented in Israel and perhaps around the world: according to two channels, Netanyahu is heading to a dazzling and overwhelming victory, whereas on three other channels, he is set for a resounding and unprecedented defeat.
Against the existing options, the public’s answer is mainly embarrassment. This embarrassment is reflected in a host of contradictory data. Here’s an example: Among right-wing voters, 20 percent simultaneously agree both that Netanyahu has no replacement and that he should resign after October 7, no matter what happened afterwards.
Hence the assumption that a party promising both change and right-wing politics will defy all predictions. As a bonus, it will also call for unity and an end of the mutual boycott between political camps, no matter who the prime minister is. This sentiment is growing in every poll, but for now nobody is declaring support for such a government, except perhaps Benny Gantz, who is already exhausted by his time in the Knesset.
Who would such a party help? Certainly Netanyahu. But his suspicion will prevent him from helping a party that might switch sides, and journalists will, as always, uncover the hidden ties to his office. Dozens of formations, no less, are being registered these days to draw votes from the change-hungry public, from former IDF general Ofer Winter, to ex-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, and others. And maybe, in the end, it will be the reservists’ wives, who’ve been holding down the home front now for nearly two years. What’s interesting is that walking among us is a senior minister in the next government who still does not know that this is their fate.
