{"id":523215,"date":"2026-07-03T11:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/523215\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T11:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T11:26:08","slug":"netanyahus-unity-government-pivot-could-reshape-israeli-politics-end-boycott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/523215\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu’s unity government pivot could reshape Israeli politics, end boycott"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> on Tuesday night, sitting in a television studio conducting a live interview. It was as though he had never left.<\/p>\n

Though he had.<\/p>\n

Since October 7, Netanyahu has given dozens of live interviews in English to foreign media outlets, including major US and European broadcasters. Hebrew-language television interviews? Hardly any.<\/p>\n

Tuesday night\u2019s appearance was on Channel 14, the same station to which he also granted an interview in June 2024. The only other Hebrew-language television interview he has given since the war began was to i24 last August.<\/p>\n

Channel 14 can fairly be described as Netanyahu<\/a>\u2019s home court. Those who bristle at that characterization need only consider this: During the 45-minute interview conducted by Yinon Magal on the station\u2019s flagship Patriots program, the studio audience several times burst into chants of \u201cBibi, Bibi, Bibi.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t 60 Minutes.<\/p>\n

In fairness to the prime minister, it should be noted that since October 7, he has held numerous press conferences and fielded extensive questions from the Israeli media. But a sit-down interview in Hebrew? Those have been exceedingly rare.<\/p>\n

Until now.<\/p>\n

\"Israel'sIsrael’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a ceremony commemorating Israel’s Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers, or Yom HaZikaron, at the Military Cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on April 21, 2026 (credit: Ilia Yefimovich\/AFP via Getty Images)Netanyahu grows familiar in time for elections<\/p>\n

With elections<\/a> \u2013 that, by law, must be held no later than October 27 \u2013 drawing ever closer, expect to see Netanyahu become a much more familiar presence on Israeli television. This is what he does before elections. He likes campaigning, he excels at it, and as Israelis head toward what will be the 11th national election under his leadership, expect a steady stream of Hebrew-language interviews.<\/p>\n

If Tuesday night\u2019s interview marked the return of campaign Netanyahu, it also revealed the central objective around which he appears intent on building that campaign: bringing an end to the political boycott that has shaped Israeli politics for much of the past six years.<\/p>\n

Two developments this week suggest he believes the moment may finally be ripe.<\/p>\n

The first was his call, initially made at Saturday night\u2019s press conference and then repeated Tuesday night, for a broad national government after the next election.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu framed the idea not merely as a political preference but as a national necessity. Israel, he argued, faces external threats and internal divisions too profound to be managed by another narrow coalition.<\/p>\n

The repeated boycotts that have fractured Israeli politics in recent years, he said, need to end. The country, in his telling, contains far more consensus than is reflected in the Knesset debates, and the next government should be built around those areas of agreement rather than the boycotts that have become the defining feature of coalition politics.<\/p>\n

Standing alone, that appeal might have sounded like little more than campaign rhetoric.<\/p>\n

Courtroom developments folded into campaign narrative<\/p>\n

Then came Monday\u2019s developments in the courtroom.<\/p>\n

The judges presiding over Netanyahu\u2019s long-running criminal trial said this week that their assessment, first expressed in June 2023, remained unchanged. Even after Netanyahu spent some 18 months on the witness stand, they continued to believe there were difficulties in proving the bribery charge in Case 4000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The judges neither dismissed the charge nor instructed the prosecution to withdraw it. But their comments again placed a question mark over the most serious allegation facing the prime minister. Case 4000 is by far the gravest of the three cases against Netanyahu, and the one carrying the greatest legal and political consequences were he to be convicted.<\/p>\n

The timing could hardly have been more politically significant.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu called for a broad national government on Saturday night, unaware that two days later Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman would publicly reaffirm the court\u2019s longstanding reservations regarding the bribery charge. But once she did, Netanyahu immediately folded the judges\u2019 remarks into the political narrative he is constructing ahead of the election.<\/p>\n

His argument, laid out explicitly Tuesday night, is straightforward.<\/p>\n

The criminal cases against him did more than put him on trial. According to Netanyahu, they became the foundation for the political boycott against him.<\/p>\n

The rest is political history.<\/p>\n

That boycott, in turn, produced years of repeated elections and ultimately left Netanyahu with little alternative after the Likud won the 2022 elections but to form a narrow coalition with the haredi parties and the hard-right Religious Zionist and Otzma Yehudit parties.<\/p>\n

Now, he argues, that foundation is beginning to crack.<\/p>\n

The judges\u2019 reaffirmation that they continue to see difficulties in proving the bribery charge is significant because if the principal charge underpinning the indictments begins to unravel, Netanyahu argues, then so too does the principal justification for the political boycott built around those indictments.<\/p>\n

Whether one accepts that argument is almost beside the point. Politically, Netanyahu is already campaigning as though it is true.<\/p>\n

That, in turn, dovetails neatly with his call for a broad national government. The personal, ideological, and political objections many of Netanyahu\u2019s opponents have toward him will not suddenly disappear. But if the bribery charge ultimately falls by the wayside, the main public rationale for refusing to sit with him becomes considerably harder to sustain. Remove that charge, and one of the central pillars supporting the boycott begins to erode.<\/p>\n

Predictably, Netanyahu\u2019s appeal for a broad national government appears to resonate more with the public than with the political class.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu’s political rivals reject unity gov’t with him<\/p>\n

A Direct Polls survey conducted this week for i24NEWS found that fully half of Israelis favor a broad national unity government after the next election. Netanyahu\u2019s political rivals, at least for now, reject it out of hand \u2013 that is, if he is part of that government.<\/p>\n

Gadi Eisenkot, whose party has emerged in the polls as Netanyahu\u2019s principal challenger, said that the prime minister, who \u201cblindly led Israel to a historic low\u201d and \u201cworks day and night to sow division and incitement,\u201d has no standing to preach about national unity.<\/p>\n

Opposition leader Yair Lapid was even more dismissive, declaring that a man who presided over October 7, \u201clegitimized Kahanism, normalized corruption,\u201d and \u201cbuilt his entire political career on hatred and incitement\u201d would not be welcomed into any government led by his camp.<\/p>\n

In other words: Bibi, nice try. But forget about it.<\/p>\n

Or perhaps not.<\/p>\n

The more interesting political question may not be whether Lapid or Eisenkot are prepared to abandon the boycott of Netanyahu. They have made their positions crystal clear. The more consequential question is whether new political players emerge after the election who are not burdened by those same positions.<\/p>\n

And there are signs that such players are emerging.<\/p>\n

Take Brig.-Gen. (res.) Dedi Simchi, who is working with Benny Gantz and is also in talks with former communications minister Yoaz Hendel about a joint political framework. He is advocating almost exactly the kind of politics Netanyahu has suddenly begun talking about.<\/p>\n

His objective, he has said, is not to deliver either political bloc the 61 seats needed to govern alone. Quite the opposite. It is to deny both camps that majority and force them into a broad Zionist coalition, reflecting what he says is the public\u2019s preference. A Channel 12 poll this week gave this prospective party six seats.<\/p>\n

Whether Simchi\u2019s political venture ultimately succeeds is almost beside the point. Its significance lies elsewhere.<\/p>\n

It reflects a growing realization in parts of the political center and center-right that Israel\u2019s years of political paralysis may simply be unsustainable. Rather than aligning themselves permanently with one bloc or the other, Simchi and those around him are trying to create a political force capable of bringing the two sides together.<\/p>\n

He is not alone.<\/p>\n

Former Likud minister and UN ambassador Gilad Erdan is reportedly working to assemble what has already been dubbed by some as \u201cLikud B,\u201d including figures such as Yuli Edelstein, while leaving open the possibility of serving in a government either with Netanyahu or with centrist parties, depending on the election results.<\/p>\n

Taken together, these initiatives suggest that the coming election may not simply be another rerun of the familiar \u201cpro-Bibi versus anti-Bibi\u201d contest. They also point to the emergence of political frameworks whose defining characteristic is not allegiance to one camp, but the flexibility to work with either.<\/p>\n

Yet there is another piece of Netanyahu\u2019s political strategy that, at first glance, appears to point in precisely the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

While speaking about broadening his coalition after the election, Netanyahu has simultaneously been investing considerable political capital in advancing legislation demanded by the haredi parties \u2013 legislation almost guaranteed to alienate many of the very centrist politicians he may eventually hope to bring into a future coalition.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, this week\u2019s first-reading passage of the Basic Law: Torah Study bill, legislation advanced by the haredi parties that critics say is intended to provide a Basic Law shield for yeshiva students who do not serve in the military. The bill is only one in a series of haredi legislative priorities that the coalition has accelerated in recent weeks, following repeated threats by Shas and United Torah Judaism to boycott coalition votes unless their agenda moved forward.<\/p>\n

On the surface, the strategy appears self-defeating. Why alienate tomorrow\u2019s potential coalition partners \u2013 and a good part of the public \u2013 to appease the haredi parties?<\/p>\n

The answer may be that Netanyahu is not looking to replace the haredi parties in his next coalition. He is looking to supplement them.<\/p>\n

Even if the prime minister succeeds in persuading new political players to abandon the boycott against him after the election, it is difficult to imagine a stable coalition that does not also include Shas and at least part of United Torah Judaism (UTJ). Those parties remain his most dependable political allies and, in all likelihood, indispensable components of any future Netanyahu-led government.<\/p>\n

That helps explain why he is investing so much political capital in advancing their legislative priorities now. It is less about winning votes than about preserving trust.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu wants the haredi parties entering post-election coalition negotiations convinced that he kept faith with them. If he succeeds in broadening his coalition afterward, he wants to do so from a position in which his traditional partners remain firmly at his side, not nursing grievances over promises they believe he broke.<\/p>\n

The broad coalition Netanyahu is now talking about, in other words, is not one built instead of the haredim. It is one built on top of them.<\/p>\n

Seen through that prism, the apparent contradiction in his political strategy this week disappears. His simultaneous appeal to the political center and his efforts to satisfy the haredi parties are not competing strategies. They are two sides of the same political strategy, each designed to lay the groundwork for the same post-election objective: a broader coalition led by Netanyahu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night, sitting in a television studio conducting a live interview.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,4410,85,46,74468,58195,954,14406,21141,43,238],"class_list":["post-523215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-elections","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-elections","tag-israel-elections-2026","tag-israeli-politics","tag-knesset","tag-likud","tag-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}