Can Naftali Bennett defeat Netanyahu? Inside the Israeli opposition’s big gamble

War-weary Israelis have clearly tired of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership, but it is still uncertain as to whether opposition forces will be able to put aside their wide ideological differences to defeat him in the October election, Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin told the Haaretz Podcast.

Scheindlin, a veteran political analyst and strategist, said the recent announcement that Netanyahu challenger and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will join with Yair Lapid – also a former prime minister – is a harbinger of an opposition seeking to run in a united bloc.

What is unclear is whether this push for a united opposition is “an extremely sophisticated political strategy based on mathematical calculations, or it's absolutely an arbitrary guess – a finger in the wind.”

Lapid and Bennett are joining forces despite the fact that Bennett’s right-wing pro-occupation positions are firmly in line with Netanyahu’s, “minus the corruption and populism,” said Scheindlin, while Lapid supports a two-state solution.

Asked if this election is indeed as fateful as it is being framed, Scheindlin replied that in her experience, every election in Israel’s history is expected to “change the course of the country. And every time it was true.”

The difference is, she said, that even if Netanyahu is defeated, “Israel has gone so far in the direction of an undemocratic transformation and becoming a permanent expansionist, occupying undemocratic state – it will be much harder to turn the clock back.”

Analysis by Dahlia Scheindlin | The Problem With Naftali Bennett

Far-right Minister Smotrich Says Forming Government With Arab Party Chairman 'Worse Than October 7'

Top Israeli Elections Official Resigns, Risking Electoral Integrity

Despite the Cascade of Crises, Israeli Politics Remains Stuck

Analysis by Dahila Scheindlin | Israel's Biggest Existential Threat Isn't Iran

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(100)

Making Israel's case to ChatGPT and Grok: Hasbara meets AI in multi-million dollar PR push

Fighting antisemitism online was meant to be the focus of the Israeli government’s multimillion-dollar digital PR campaign run by President Donald Trump’s former digital guru, Brad Parscale. But inste...

24 Apr 28min

'You can't heal in a perpetual war': Israeli peace activist Yonatan Zeigen on following in his mother's footsteps

The final moments of Vivian Silver’s life were a “pivotal turning point” for her son Yonatan Zeigen, who now dedicates his life to Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, following in the footsteps of his...

20 Apr 27min

'The Hungarians turned their anxiety into hope, that's the main lesson for Israelis'

The dramatic landslide election in Hungary toppling authoritarian populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, resonated deeply for Israel in diverse ways, explained Haaretz’s David Issacharoff, who covered ...

17 Apr 25min

'We'll kill you, traitor': How far-right thugs and police target Israel's antiwar protest leaders

As diplomatic talks between Iran and the United States continue in an effort to extend the temporary cease-fire due to expire on April 22, public opinion surveys show that while a majority of Israelis...

14 Apr 32min

Iran war cease-fire update with Amos Harel: 'Trump wants out and Netanyahu is extremely disappointed'

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is "extremely disappointed" by the terms of the temporary cease-fire hammered out between Donald Trump's White House and Iran, but has little choice but to accept it ...

9 Apr 17min

What Trump got wrong about Iran, what the IDF got wrong about Hezbollah: Amos Harel on wars with no exit strategy

As the war with Iran drags on and the conflict with Hezbollah intensifies, a growing number of Israelis are “losing faith” in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promises of a decisive victory, Haaret...

6 Apr 30min

How Israel 'is consolidating its control' in Gaza and the West Bank as the world focuses on Iran

With a high-profile conflict between IDF soldiers and a CNN crew, the establishment of five new Israeli settler outposts on territory meant to be under Palestinian Authority control in a single night,...

3 Apr 28min

'Keep it simple and stay sane': Adeena Sussman's cooking tips for a complicated wartime Passover

As Israelis continue to run to bomb shelters for protection from deadly Iranian missile attacks, the prospect of hosting Passover meals has felt overwhelming. On the Haaretz Podcast, acclaimed food wr...

31 Mars 27min