Eisenkot and Bennett met about a merger and decided against it, for now
Israeli slates must be filed by Tuesday evening ahead of the 27 October election, and the anti-Netanyahu bloc is arguing over a number that exists only in an unpublished internal poll.
Channel 12 reported on Friday that Gadi Eisenkot, the former IDF chief of staff who leads Yashar, had met Naftali Bennett, who heads the B’Yachad list — rendered “Together” in Haaretz’s English — and that the two decided against a merger for now. Eisenkot, asked about combinations before the deadline, said: “I’m talking to everyone; if I publicize it now, it won’t be serious,” adding, “We are preparing surprises in the next few days. I’m convinced it will happen and be to the benefit of the State of Israel.” Haaretz reported on 4 September that an internal poll of “thousands of voters” found a joint Yashar–Together list could take 39 to 40 seats, four to five more than the two would win apart. No pollster, sample size, field dates or commissioning party is given. It is an interested party’s own polling, leaked at the moment it is most useful.
The published series is steadier and less flattering to the merger case. Channel 12 polling reported by Haaretz put Yashar on 22 seats against Likud’s 24 on 30 June, and on 24 against Likud’s 22 by 11 August — a four-seat deficit turned into a two-seat lead over six weeks. The 18 August breakdown gave Yashar 24, Likud 22, Bennett’s Together 15, the Democrats 11, Yisrael Beiteinu 10, United Torah Judaism 8, Otzma Yehudit 8, Shas 7, Hadash-Ta’al 5 and the United Arab List 5, with the anti-Netanyahu bloc one seat short of a majority without Arab parties. On the other side, ToI reported Friday that Gilad Erdan’s Unity had quit the race a month after he and Yuli Edelstein launched it in Tel Aviv on 6 August; Haaretz reported on 1 September that Itamar Ben-Gvir is resisting mergers, holding out for last-minute concessions.
Assessment: The 39–40 figure is the thing to distrust. It is unpublished, unattributed and circulating precisely because merger talks stalled — the classic use of internal polling is to pressure a reluctant partner, and Eisenkot’s promised “surprises” have a deadline attached. Note also the arithmetic trap in the public series: the opposition bloc figure drops from 69 to 60 between July and August because the count stops including Arab parties, not because voters moved. Anyone charting a line across that break is manufacturing a collapse. And a caution about this desk’s own view: we reached almost none of the Hebrew-language press this weekend, so weight Haaretz and ToI accordingly.