Netanyahu lashes out as five opposition parties pledge to campaign together before October 27 vote

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticised a gathering of opposition leaders who met in Tel Aviv on Saturday to coordinate a joint strategy aimed at ending his rule in the October 27 Knesset elections. The meeting, hosted at the home of Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, is the first formal step toward a formalised alliance between five parties that have spent recent months competing with one another for the same anti-Netanyahu vote.

According to Israeli Channel 12, which first reported the meeting, the gathering was attended by Lapid, Naftali Bennett, who leads the Bennett 2026 party, Avigdor Lieberman, head of Yisrael Beiteinu; Gadi Eisenkot, head of Yashar; and Democrats leader Yair Golan. The five agreed to cooperate in an effort to raise turnout among their respective support bases and to put forward a single, united alternative to the ruling Likud party.

The initiative is significant because Israeli opposition politics has been defined for years by fragmentation, defections and short-lived electoral arrangements. Parties frequently agree to run together and then split before the ballot or immediately after it, and alliances built for one election have a record of collapsing during the campaign itself. Any serious effort to hold the bloc together through the vote, and then through the negotiations that follow, would mark a departure from that pattern.

Netanyahu responded almost immediately, writing on X that Yashar leader Eisenkot intended to form a government with Lapid, Golan, Bennett, Yisrael Beiteinu and Arab parties. "Only a strong Likud will stop them," the prime minister wrote, urging supporters of his right-wing party to turn out. Alongside the text, he posted an AI-altered image of the opposition meeting in which two figures had been inserted into the photograph: United Arab List leader Mansour Abbas and Hadash-Ta'al leader Ahmad Tibi, neither of whom attended the gathering.

The manipulated picture drew attention on its own terms. Political figures in Israel have increasingly used artificially generated or digitally altered imagery to portray rivals as cooperating with political enemies, and the practice has drawn repeated criticism for blurring the line between documentation and fabrication. By adding the two Arab party leaders to a photograph of the meeting, Netanyahu appeared to signal how he intends to frame the race — as a contest between the right and a bloc that depends on parties representing Arab citizens of Israel, at a moment when the participation of those parties is itself in doubt.

Lapid, meanwhile, published a group photograph together with a written document setting out the principles guiding the parties' cooperation before and after the election. Under the agreement, each leader pledged to work within their own constituency to boost turnout and to reach out to different sectors of society, with the stated aim of securing a parliamentary majority and forming a new government. The document also provided for the creation of three joint working groups within 48 hours of the meeting.

The first group is tasked with mobilising voters and with what the opposition leaders described as safeguarding the integrity of the election — a reference to disputes over the fairness of the process, including the treatment of Arab parties and the conduct of official electoral bodies. Related reporting has said that Israel moved to bar the two main Arab lists from the October ballot, a step those parties have denounced and which is expected to shape the campaign.

The second working group will begin drafting the basic guidelines of the government the bloc hopes to establish. Its priorities, according to the document, include appointing an official commission of inquiry into the attacks of October 7, 2023, and preparing a new constitution. Both are long-standing demands among a broad range of Israeli parties, and their inclusion indicates that the bloc is trying to offer a governing programme rather than a simple promise of defeat for the incumbent.

The third group will handle media strategy and communications, working to counter what the document calls fake news and smear campaigns. In a closely fought race with deep personal rivalries among the opposition leaders, controlling the narrative — and defining opponents' attacks as falsehoods — is likely to be as important as voter mobilisation itself.

Bennett, a former prime minister, said in a statement that he felt renewed hope and was confident the bloc could win as many as 63 of the Knesset's 120 seats. He said the parties had agreed to cooperate fully until the election, on election day and afterwards, with the objective of forming a government that would, in his words, repair the country. Whether that optimism is justified will depend on whether the working groups produce anything beyond declarations in the three weeks remaining before voters go to the polls.

The stakes are high for Netanyahu, who returned to the premiership in December 2022 and has since fought off repeated challenges to his authority, including a judicial overhaul drive and the collapse of his governing coalition. His criticism of the opposition is intended to rattle a bloc that has struggled to appear cohesive, and to push undecided voters back toward the only party with a record of governing.

Analysts caution that unity announcements can unravel quickly once polling begins, particularly when the parties involved are ideologically distinct — ranging from liberal and pro-secular lists to nationalist and Arab parties. Yet the decision to publish a joint framework, and to name three concrete working groups with deadlines, gives the alliance a structure that previous efforts often lacked. The coming days will show whether the five leaders can sustain that structure, or whether the strains that have traditionally split Israel's opposition reassert themselves in the final stretch of the campaign.