A major political shift unfolded in Israel Tuesday evening as former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid officially unveiled their new political partnership called “Beyachad” or “Together” before more than 2,000 supporters in Tel Aviv.
The timing proved significant, as the campaign launch occurred just hours after Rabbi Dov Lando, a senior spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, issued a handwritten letter instructing party lawmakers to work toward dissolving the Knesset over stalled military draft exemption legislation.
“We no longer have trust in Netanyahu,” Rabbi Lando wrote in his message, which was widely reported across Israeli media. He also stated that talk of a political “bloc” no longer existed.
The evening’s events transformed what was originally planned as a campaign kickoff into what felt more like the opening night of an election season, as opposition groups moved to bring dissolution bills to a vote while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition appeared to fracture from within.
The Tel Aviv gathering made clear the leadership structure of the new alliance. While Yesh Atid contributes the current lawmakers, parliamentary infrastructure, and nationwide volunteer network, Bennett brings leadership experience and the potential to attract voters beyond the traditional center-left base.
This dynamic was evident in the speaking arrangements: Lapid addressed the crowd for approximately 10 minutes, while Bennett spoke for nearly an hour, with Lapid effectively ceding center stage to his partner.
“Before we made this union, I had to ask myself only one question,” Lapid told the audience. “Am I ready to tell you that Naftali Bennett can lead the country in the coming years? The answer is ‘yes.’”
Shortly after, Lapid introduced Bennett as “the former prime minister and the prime minister in the near future of the State of Israel.” The crowd responded with standing applause and chanting.
Lapid characterized the arrangement as an act of responsibility rather than personal sacrifice following years of political fragmentation. “I did not put my ego aside,” he explained. “I put my heart in the right place.”
He described Together as uniting “the Israeli center with the liberal right,” aiming not just to merge parties but to reconnect Israeli society after years of division. Bennett, he noted, was “a right-wing man” while he was “a man of the center,” but their disagreement was intentional.
“We do not pretend that we agree on everything,” Lapid said. “There are disagreements between us, and that is good. We are saying to Israeli society: look, people who do not agree on everything know how to work together.”
This message captures Together’s political proposition: presenting their alliance as a return to functional governance after the failures following October 7 and years of coalition politics built around vetoes and personal loyalty to Netanyahu.
However, the alliance remains structurally unbalanced. Bennett’s emerging political framework currently lacks the party apparatus that Yesh Atid has developed over 14 years. Bennett has publicly presented only three figures for his future list: Jonathan Shalev of Katef el Katef, former Transportation Ministry director-general Keren Turner, and former Communications Ministry director-general Liran Avisar Ben Horin.
In contrast, Yesh Atid maintains sitting lawmakers, municipal networks, activist groups, and local branches nationwide, including language-specific communities for Spanish, English, Russian, and French speakers, as well as Arab and Druze citizens, LGBTQ Israelis, people with disabilities, senior citizens, self-employed workers, young adults, and teenagers.
This established network now provides Bennett with what his new list couldn’t have built in time: a campaign infrastructure.
Jonathan Shalev made the leadership arrangement explicit from the stage: “The most suitable person to lead this historic move, to rehabilitate, unite and rebuild the state, is none other than Naftali Bennett.” He praised Lapid for “putting ego aside” and said there were leaders who saw “only the good of the people and the good of the State of Israel.”
When Bennett took the stage, he emphasized the contrast between the new alliance and Netanyahu’s coalition. “Yair Lapid and I came here tonight together precisely because we are different,” Bennett said. “Lapid has his beliefs, which he absorbed in his parents’ home, in secular Tel Aviv. I have my beliefs, which I absorbed in my parents’ home, on the Carmel, in Haifa, in a religious-Zionist community. We are not hiding the differences between us. We are proud of them.”
He added, “We are proud of them because we are proving that what we have in common is infinitely greater than what separates us.”
Bennett’s speech combined discussion of national trauma, political criticism, and policy goals. He argued that Israel’s darkest hour after October 7 had also revealed its social strength. “The government did not save the country,” he said. “The people of Israel saved the country.”
He praised civilians who rushed south on the morning of October 7, reservists, volunteers, bereaved families, hostage families, and soldiers still fighting in Lebanon. But he accused the current government of acting as though the massacre had not occurred.
“They are trying to deny the past, and they are abandoning the future,” Bennett said. He then connected the Together launch to the immediate coalition crisis.
“They are talking now about dissolving the Knesset,” he said, referring to efforts to advance elections. “Now they are trying to set it in September, before the memorial day for the massacre, because then what? The people of Israel will forget?”
He then delivered one of the evening’s sharpest political attacks. “This alliance of draft dodgers is collapsing before our eyes,” Bennett said.
The comment resonated in a hall already aware of the day’s developments. Rabbi Lando’s letter had transformed the Haredi draft crisis from a long-running legislative dispute into a potential election trigger. Reports indicated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted more time, while Haredi parties were considering an earlier date.
For the Together party, the military service issue represents more than a campaign tool. It sits at the center of the alliance’s attempt to redefine responsibility after October 7. Bennett, who admitted that before the massacre he didn’t feel the same urgency around Haredi military service, told the audience that the war changed everything.
“October 7 changed everything,” he said during a question-and-answer session with a young man preparing for combat service. Bennett argued that the Israel Defense Forces now lacks tens of thousands of combat soldiers and said the burden falls too heavily on soldiers and reservists already serving.
“Draft evasion is killing our soldiers,” he said, adding that he wasn’t accusing individual Haredi young men, but the political system that had trapped them outside the service framework.
His proposed solution combined pressure and integration. Those who don’t serve, he said, shouldn’t receive economic benefits from the state. Simultaneously, he spoke of creating frameworks that would allow ultra-Orthodox men to serve in ways adapted to their community, including border-defense models that combine Torah study and military duty.
Bennett also used the platform to make a direct promise to October 7 victims’ families: the first act of a government he leads would be to establish a state commission of inquiry.
He told the story of Menashe and Sigal, whose daughters were murdered at the Nova festival, and said they had asked only for answers.
“I promise you that the first action we take in the new government we form will be to establish a state commission of inquiry,” Bennett said. He then added, “I apologize in the name of the state that this has not happened until now.”
Lapid, in his remarks, struck a similar theme. He said Israelis wanted a government that sees them and cares about them, not one that describes the October 7 massacre as merely a tactical failure. “They want a normal government of people who work for them,” Lapid said. “And we will give them exactly that.”
The event’s emotional language extended beyond the stage. Several Yesh Atid lawmakers and activists repeatedly used the same words in interviews: hope, responsibility, healing, and elections.
Yesh Atid lawmaker Vladimir Beliak described the atmosphere as unusually energized. “There is a very, very special atmosphere here,” Beliak said. “This is the first conference of Together, Bennett, and Lapid tonight in the same place, on the same stage. I think there are at least 2,000 people here. I have to say, I have not felt an atmosphere like this for a long time, an atmosphere of change, of hope, especially hope, in light of the news of the last few hours. I think we are going to do something big here.”
Member of the Knesset Naor Shiri also connected the event directly to Rabbi Lando’s intervention. “This event is, first of all, super moving,” Shiri said. “I think we are on a day when maybe we will receive the news that we are going to elections. More than anything, this event symbolizes the maturity, the leadership, and the responsibility of Bennett and certainly of Lapid. They knew how to put ego and disagreement aside, and now we are in an event that has to win.”
The evening revealed the practical logic behind the alliance. Bennett serves as the declared leader, while Yesh Atid provides much of the existing field operation. Bennett gives Together its candidate for prime minister and its ability to speak to voters beyond Lapid’s traditional base; Lapid’s party provides the sitting Israeli lawmakers, the activists, and the organizational memory of a movement built over 14 years.
The crowd didn’t appear to view that arrangement as a weakness. By the end of the event, both the stage and the hall had clearly answered whether Yesh Atid would fully embrace Bennett as the candidate to replace Netanyahu.
The Netanyahu bloc was being challenged from two directions simultaneously. From inside the coalition, Rabbi Lando’s letter signaled that the Haredi partnership with Netanyahu could no longer be assumed. From outside, Bennett and Lapid used Together’s first major rally to present a ready-made alternative.
Whether elections come in August, September, October, or later, the campaign now has its first defining image: Lapid standing before his own party’s national network and inviting Bennett to lead it. As Lapid put it, “What you are feeling now, and have not felt for a long time, is called hope.”
For Together, the question after Tuesday night is whether that feeling can be converted into votes quickly enough.
