“We must know how to compromise”—we drill this sentiment into our children constantly. But do we always set a personal example? Not necessarily. There’s a gap between what we like to say about ourselves and reality. The same holds for the “unity” trend of the 2026 elections—or, in Netanyahu’s own words on Saturday night, a “broad national government.”
Most of the public (43-30 percent)—and an even larger majority among Jews (47-26 percent)—support forming a broad national government after the elections. Within the coalition there is very wide support (61-13 percent), while the opposition is against it (48-33 percent), presumably because Netanyahu himself is the one calling for it.
But this is only theoretical support. When it comes down to the specific, painful concessions each camp would need to make to form such a government, the willingness drops. Among right-wing voters, 30 percent would settle for only a partial reform, 22 percent for evacuating outposts—but the share who oppose any concession at all is double that. In other words: a broad national government in which Eisenkot, Liberman, or Bennett aren’t just kept out of the driver’s seat—they’re the spare tire in the trunk.
The picture is similar on the opposition side: 21 percent would settle for partial Haredi conscription, 22 percent for a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre, and 46 percent aren’t willing to concede anything at all. There, the fantasy is a unity government with the other side (but without the Haredim, since they dodge the draft; without Smotrich and Ben Gvir, since they’re messianic; and without Bibi—because he’s Bibi).
This is also the great test facing all the party fragments and politicians scraping the bottom of the political major league who are now trying somehow to connect and clear the electoral threshold on the strength of a party promising exactly this—a broad national government. Perhaps that’s why all the champions of unity haven’t even managed, so far, to unite among themselves.
This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Israel Hayom.
