Yashar! chairman Gadi Eisenkot and Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman agreed Tuesday to tone down their increasingly public rivalry and focus their election campaigns on strengthening the opposition bloc seeking to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The two held a one-on-one meeting after days of mutual criticism and personal tension, discussing what people familiar with the conversation described as “bloc-level strategic coordination.”
Yashar! chairman Gadi Eisenkot and Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman
(Photo: Shaul Golan)
According to those sources, the two agreed that “what matters is the bloc” and that their priority should be increasing the overall strength of the parties opposed to Netanyahu rather than concentrating on which party emerges as the largest.
The meeting follows several days of public friction. Liberman recently criticized Eisenkot’s political strategy and warned against what he described as parties within the opposition cannibalizing one another’s support, arguing that becoming the largest party would mean little if the broader bloc failed to grow.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Liberman urged Eisenkot to take responsibility for the broader opposition campaign rather than focus solely on Yashar!, according to people familiar with the talks. His argument was that the bloc’s leaders should coordinate a campaign aimed at breaking the political deadlock rather than compete primarily over who should be the next prime minister.
Liberman also argued that the debate over which opposition leader should become prime minister and which faction should be the largest serves Netanyahu’s campaign by diverting attention from the opposition’s shared goal of replacing his government.
It remains unclear whether Eisenkot will scale back his own campaign to make Yashar! the largest party, but he agreed during the meeting that strengthening the broader bloc should come first.
The rapprochement comes after the main opposition parties have already taken steps to coordinate ahead of the Oct. 27 election. Yashar! signed a surplus-vote agreement with Yair Golan’s Democrats, while Yisrael Beytenu signed a parallel agreement with B’Yachad, the joint list led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.
The immediate goal is to bring together the leaders of the four main parties in the bloc, Yashar!, Yisrael Beytenu, B’Yachad and the Democrats, at a meeting planned for Saturday night at opposition leader Yair Lapid’s home.
Eisenkot and Liberman also agreed to stop attacking each other publicly, with both sides concluding that continued infighting could undermine their effort to expand the bloc’s support.
In a joint statement after the meeting, Yashar! and Yisrael Beytenu said the two leaders had agreed to continue cooperating and coordinating with the other parties in the bloc “to achieve victory in the election,” adding that their overriding commitment was to replacing what they called “the government of the Oct. 7 massacre.”