Together head Naftali Bennett arrives to cast his ballot at a polling station in Ra’anana, during Election Day in Israel, October 27, 2026. (Tal Gal/Flash90)
It’s Monday, November 2, and Israel’s future rests in the hands of a triumvirate, though none of its members is the country’s Caesar. As with the alliances that presided over the fall of the Roman Republic, whether Yashar’s Gadi Eisenkot, Yisrael Beiteinu’s Avigdor Liberman and Together’s Naftali Bennett act together or apart will decide the country’s fate.
The conventional wisdom puts Eisenkot at the head of the trio. With 21 seats, Yashar is the second-largest party in the Knesset, and the former IDF chief of staff will most likely be the first to receive the president’s mandate to form a government. Some are watching the enigmatic Liberman and his seven seats. Since 2019, his decisions about whom he will and won’t sit with have denied Benjamin Netanyahu a majority and fueled Israel’s long political crisis. But in my humble view, the man who holds the most power is sitting right now in the upper-middle-class town of Ra’anana: Naftali Bennett.