Country Before Party: Israel’s Opposition Must Not Fail This Moment

Israel stands at a historic crossroads. The government that emerges from this election will determine whether the country begins to repair its democracy and recover its moral bearings—or continues toward deeper division, international isolation, and the erosion of its founding promise.

For Israel’s opposition, this is no ordinary coalition negotiation. It tests whether its leaders have the courage to put country before party, personal ambition, and ideological prejudice.

The parliamentary arithmetic offers an opening. The completed count gives parties opposed to Benjamin Netanyahu a combined 67 of the Knesset’s 120 seats: 48 for the Jewish opposition parties and 19 for the Arab-led parties. Netanyahu’s bloc holds 53. These numbers create an opportunity to replace him, not an agreement on how to govern.

A potential majority is not yet a government. It becomes one only when political leaders accept the responsibility that the moment demands.

Gadi Eisenkot and his prospective partners must move decisively to negotiate a governing agreement with the Arab parties. Refusing that partnership would squander the clearest available route to a government independent of Netanyahu.

Let there be no misunderstanding: Arab participation is not a concession that Jewish politicians magnanimously bestow. Arab citizens are citizens of Israel. Their votes carry the same democratic legitimacy as anyone else’s, and their elected representatives have every right to participate in governing the country.

A democracy cannot ask a fifth of its population to accept its obligations while treating their representatives as permanently unfit to share political power. Arab citizens account for approximately that share of Israel’s population; their parties’ electoral gains make this contradiction impossible to evade.

Their inclusion is therefore more than a parliamentary necessity. It is an opportunity to begin repairing the relationship between Jewish and Arab citizens and demonstrate that equal citizenship can become a governing principle rather than an unfulfilled promise.

Such a partnership would not erase profound disagreements. Nor would it, by itself, resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it could establish something indispensable to both: the recognition that neither people can build a secure future through the permanent exclusion or subordination of the other.

After the trauma of October 7 and the devastation of Gaza, Israel needs leadership capable of confronting suffering without turning it into a permanent justification for more suffering, and begin the healing process in the wake of this tragic development.

Israel needs a government prepared to protect its citizens while recognizing Palestinian humanity, rejecting vengeance as a political program, and pursuing a credible path toward coexistence.

That work must begin at home.

A Jewish-Arab governing partnership could signal that Israel’s future will not be entrusted indefinitely to those who exploit fear, deepen mistrust, and portray equality as a threat.

Its first obligation would be to govern: defend democratic institutions, uphold the rule of law, protect all citizens, and begin restoring public confidence in the state.

This would require difficult compromises. Every prospective partner would have to distinguish between principles that protect the country and positions maintained chiefly to satisfy a political constituency.

No party should be asked to surrender its identity. Every party should recognize that governing a fractured country requires cooperation with people whose identity, history, and convictions differ from its own.

The alternative is not ideological purity without consequences. It is political paralysis with potentially disastrous consequences.

If the opposition cannot reach an agreement, another election becomes possible. Its outcome would not guarantee a stronger mandate for change. Netanyahu could gain another opportunity to assemble a majority, while the country loses more time to uncertainty and division.

The opposition must not confuse denying Netanyahu a majority at the ballot box with ending his rule. Only forming a viable alternative government can accomplish that.

Nor should its leaders imagine that voters will readily forgive a failure born of exclusion or personal rivalry. Citizens who voted for change deserve more than another demonstration of why their leaders cannot work together.

Israel cannot afford to make perpetual crisis its system of government.

Defending Israel must never require defending every action of its government. Opposition to Netanyahu’s policies is not opposition to Israel’s existence.

What Israel needs now is neither another savior nor another campaign. It needs courageous, visionary leaders willing to accept the discipline of shared responsibility.

Eisenkot, the leader of the largest opposition party, and the other opposition leaders must begin serious negotiations with the Arab parties now, even though some pledged during their campaign not to join a coalition government that would include the Arab parties. They must agree on a workable program, establish mutual obligations, and resist the temptation to sacrifice the possible to the politically comfortable.

This is the moment to demonstrate courage, not calculate excuses.

Israel’s opposition holds an opportunity it may not receive again soon. It must use it to form a government that rejects exclusion, restores democratic restraint, and begins the arduous work of national repair.

History will not ask whether these leaders protected every campaign pledge or secured every desired ministry. It will ask whether, when offered a path away from disaster, they had the courage to take it.

They must form that government—and put the country first.