The launch of the new Amcha Yisrael party, led by Ofer Winter, ahead of the upcoming Israeli general elections, in Jerusalem, August 25, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
It’s Wednesday, August 26, and in the weeks following October 7, Netanyahu was slipping into a borrowed Tel Aviv apartment to hear the legendary Givati commander Ofer Winter walk him through his plan to conquer Gaza. Winter is now threatening to storm Netanyahu’s position—and win or lose, he could leave the prime minister in ruins.
After months of speculation, Winter’s party, “Amcha Yisrael” (People of Israel), has surfaced with him at its head. The general first entered public consciousness in 2014, when he sent his soldiers into Operation Protective Edge under a signed letter:
History chose us to stand at the forefront of the fight against the terrorist enemy from Gaza, who defies, curses and reviles the God of Israel’s battles. I lift my eyes to heaven and call out with you: “Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad.” Lord, God of Israel, make our path successful as we go to fight for Your people Israel against an enemy that blasphemes Your name.
Religious language of that kind was close to taboo in the IDF at the time; it has since become almost expected from commanders, but at the time it drew accusations of messianism and counteraccusations of religious persecution. During that same operation, one of his officers, Hadar Goldin, was killed and abducted into a tunnel in Rafah. Winter ordered a crushing response—Israeli airstrikes and artillery pounded the neighborhoods around the presumed tunnel route, more than 2,000 bombs, shells and missiles in the first three hours. Goldin’s body was successfully hidden, only returning to Israel last year.
After the war, Winter was passed over for promotion. He put it down to religious discrimination inside the IDF’s secular elite; his superiors pointed instead to a streak of insubordination and unpredictability. He returned to public view on October 7, when, holding no command and on his own initiative, he drove south, joined the fighters around Kibbutz Be’eri and fought to repel the infiltrators from the town.
Beside him on the list is Yosef Haddad—a Christian Arab and Golani veteran who lost a leg in the Second Lebanon War, and long the subject of his own will-he-won’t-he Zionist Arab party rumors. The problem those rumors kept hitting is that Haddad’s favorability ran at 73 percent among Jewish voters and just 12 percent among Arab ones. Facing the reality that his party would draw most of its support from Jews, he folded himself into a list with an actual chance of clearing the threshold, announcing he intends to be minister of hasbara—public diplomacy—in the next government.
So why are Netanyahu’s aides calling Winter their boss’s “greatest threat”? Not because he’ll challenge Netanyahu for the leadership of the right, and not because he’ll strip Likud of its base. It’s that his list is a grenade rolled into an already delicate arrangement. As one more candidate in a knitted kippah, he threatens to drag Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism under the 3.25 percent threshold—with no guarantee he then clears it himself, a swap that could burn anywhere from four to eight right-wing seats. Hence Bibi’s instruction to the smaller parties: “merge, or withdraw.”
And there’s a second worry. Say Winter does replace Smotrich and the bloc still nets the 51 or 52 seats. Netanyahu’s people aren’t sure if he will defect to the opposition. His associates insist he’ll serve under no one but Netanyahu. Winter, so far, has let them do the insisting.
Benjamin Netnayhu and Gadi Eisenkot (Chaim Goldberg/Tsafrir Abayov/FLASH90)
The gaps between the polls have never been this wide, but one thing is still shared by those predicting a historic defeat for Netanyahu and those forecasting him a hysterical victory: by every one of them, movement between the blocs is almost nonexistent.
So how many seats can actually move between the coalition bloc and the opposition? The answer is 6 percent, something like seven seats.
Even after you subtract those who won’t actually switch blocs, and those who cancel each other out, it’s safe to assume at least three seats can change hands. That’s critical, because it’s becoming clearer that the question of the Zionist majority—or the Jewish one, depending on who’s asking—is becoming the question of this election. After all, Eisenkot laid out his plan for getting a government sworn in: everyone in his camp votes yes, the Arabs abstain, with no coalition talks and without so much as a handshake.
Our own Dudi Hasid puts the gap between the blocs at six seats as of this week—which really means three seats crossing over. If Netanyahu picks them up, Eisenkot’s plan falls apart.
The answer: possible, but a stretch. Six percent are undecided, split evenly between those currently leaning coalition and those leaning opposition.
Just as interesting: inside the opposition, 8 percent—five seats—are torn among more than two parties, which makes sense given that three of the bloc’s four parties are new. The confusion peaks among the national-religious: 22 percent. No wonder every list except Ra’am and United Torah Judaism is fielding a knit-kippah candidate. The bad news for the bloc parties: only 2 percent of them—barely a quarter of a seat—are undecided between the blocs. A lot of noise, not much to show for it on the ground.
English Editor: Ari Tatarka
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Thanks for the bloc analysis. The flaw in it as I see it is your implied assumption that the parties in the blocs themselves remain static. Much of the reason for the current rigidity of the blocs is Netanyahu. As the right wing fractures with new parties potentially taking seats from Likud, RZP Otzma and even Shas and UTJ those new parties become targets for an Eisenkot, Bennet / Lapid, Lieberman coalition. These new parties are the wildcards that could lead to a far more fluid and dynamic coalition arithmetic.