Lapid Predicts Eisenkot Alliance Within Weeks
“It will take another two weeks, another three, maybe a little more, but there will be a festive, happy press conference in which we announce that Gadi Eisenkot has also joined us,” Lapid said.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said Wednesday that he expects former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot to join the political alliance between Lapid and Naftali Bennett within the coming weeks, intensifying public pressure on Eisenkot as the election campaign begins to take shape.
Speaking at the Eli Hurvitz Conference on Economy and Society, hosted by the Israel Democracy Institute, Lapid said the political system is entering the final stretch before elections, after the bill to dissolve the Knesset passed its first reading.
“In the coming days, the Knesset will settle on an election date, and the campaign will begin,” Lapid said. “And like always, everything will start very messy, and then slowly it will become clear.”
Lapid then turned directly to the question of Eisenkot, whose Yashar party has been rising in recent polls and complicating the balance inside the opposition bloc.
“It will take another two weeks, another three, maybe a little more, but there will be a festive, happy press conference in which we announce that Gadi Eisenkot has also joined us,” Lapid said.
He argued that after years of war, crisis and political instability, the public is waiting for a broader opposition union that can present itself as a serious governing alternative.
“After three and a half years of pain and sorrow and disasters, there will be a great wave of hope and optimism and normalcy,” Lapid said. “Gadi is coming, the camp is uniting, exactly as the country needs to unite.”
Lapid framed the move not only as politically useful, but as necessary.
“That is what needs to happen,” he said. “And it will be terrible if it does not happen, and that is why it will happen.”
He also reminded the audience that he and Bennett had already defeated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once and formed a government together, despite Netanyahu being stronger then than he is now.
“That was before October 7, before the economic crisis, the international crisis, the moral crisis and the madness of Ben Gvir and Yariv Levin, and still we won,” Lapid said.
According to Lapid, they won because they believed they could offer the country something better.
“After the terrible three and a half years we have been through, I believe that today more than ever,” he said.