Navigating the political woods: Gantz’s unity move and Lapid’s opposition stand - analysis

In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, two roads diverged in the political woods for Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid and National Unity Party chairman Benny Gantz.

One road led to a national emergency government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and included far-right Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party as well as the Religious Zionist party of Bezalel Smotrich.

Gantz took that road.

Lapid, however, took the other road – a road less traveled in terms of parliamentary support – and that kept him as head of the opposition as the nation was thrust into a full-blown war and yearned for unity.

The choices each leader made, as the final verse of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” succinctly puts it, have “made all the difference.”

First, for Gantz, who has seen the popularity of his party soar, with polls showing that if elections were held today with the same lineup of parties as last time, he would catapult from 12 seats to between 38 and 40. That’s a massive increase of over 215%.

Moreover, he is now consistently seen in the polls as the most suitable candidate for prime minister. A Channel 12 poll last week found that in a face-off with Netanyahu, 41% of the respondents felt Gantz was more suited to be prime minister than Netanyahu, who garnered the support of only 23% of those asked.

The road that Gantz took resonated with a nation hungry for unity, a nation that viewed this choice as putting the nation above all else, including long-simmering political feuds.

Was this the government of Gantz’s dreams? Obviously not. But, as he said at the time, “Our partnership is not political; it is a shared fate. At this time, we are all the soldiers of Israel.”

That sentiment echoed loudly with the traumatized public, who were glad to see that the political battles that many believed helped bring about the Oct. 7 catastrophe were put to the side so that the war could be fought with Hamas.

In addition to getting a massive jump in the polls, Gantz got two hands on the wheel of the leadership, steering the country’s effort in the war. No trifling matter.

Lapid took the other road.

Though he was among the first to call for a national unity government, he conditioned that on Netanyahu sidelining Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. When Netanyahu made it clear that it would not happen, Lapid took the path that kept him in the opposition.

In hindsight, that choice is not looking like the wisest of political moves.

First of all, were the numbers. In Maariv’s weekly poll on Friday, Lapid dropped from the 24 seats he has in the Knesset now to 12, a 50% decrease in strength. This decline is even more precipitous than that of the Likud, which, according to the poll, dropped from 32 Knesset seats now to 18– a steep drop of 44%, but still less than Lapid’s fall.

Why? How can that be explained?

Part of the reason is that at a time when the country thirsted for unity when hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters were under arms, it wanted to see everyone, including those who were pitted against each other for the nine long months of the judicial reform debate, put their differences aside and work together in waging this war. Lapid went in the other direction. He failed to tap into the “everyone helps carry the stretcher” sentiment at the time, and according to the polls, he is being penalized for it now.

But this is not a perfect explanation because it fails to account for Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party. Liberman, like Lapid, also opted to stay in the opposition rather than joining the national emergency government. Yet his numbers have trended upward, not downward like Lapid’s. The Maariv poll had Yisrael Beytenu going from its current six seats in the Knesset to 10 if elections were held now, a whopping 67% increase.

One falls, one rises

Why is Liberman rising while Lapid is fading? Largely because of his rhetoric. Liberman is outflanking the government from the Right – saying Israel is not hitting Hamas or Hezbollah hard enough and that Jerusalem made a mistake in allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza. That is a message that resonates with disgruntled Likud voters, seething, as the polls indicate, at Netanyahu for the October 7 disaster.

But Lapid can’t outflank Netanyahu. The opposition leader’s message – that Netanyahu is not suited as prime minister, that new elections should be held now, and that the country breached its contract to protect its citizens and must bring the hostages home now (without saying what price might be too high for him) – has not stirred the public.

Interestingly, when asked in the Channel 12 poll who, between Netanyahu and Lapid, is more suited to be prime minister, the latter, who served as prime minister for six months in 2022, trailed Netanyahu by two points, 29% to 27%.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in recent days, Lapid has made noises about a willingness to join the government or give it a “safety net” if a hostage release deal is reached that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir would oppose, possibly leading to their quitting the government.

However, a safety net is not needed. With Gantz’s 12 seats, the current national emergency government has 76 seats in the Knesset. So even if the Religious Zionist Party and Otzma Yehudit took their 14 seats and left the coalition, the national emergency government would still retain a slim majority in the Knesset with 62 seats.

In other words, the emergency government doesn’t fall if Ben-Gvir and Smotrich leave. Less than the government needing Lapid as a safety net since a Likud-backed hostage deal would pass even without Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, Lapid needs to get into the government and his hand on the wheel -- a decision he likely regretted not having made four months ago. Such a move now is critical to halt his party’s hemorrhaging support, something reflected consistently in the polls.