As Winter fuels Netanyahu’s discontent, Israel's Right faces a new dilemma

There was a palpable sense that anyone in leadership positions at the time – in politics, the military, or the intelligence services – needed to be replaced; that new faces, untainted by the failure, were needed at the helm.

This applied not only to those inside the government, but also to those outside it who helped create a climate so divisive and toxic that Israel’s enemies believed this was the perfect time to pounce.

One phrase captures the sentiment: Sweep the bums out.

That was then.

Now, with the country just two months away from elections, a look at the party lists shows that the anticipated political clean sweep never took place.

On the contrary, all the familiar figures are once again ensconced at the top of their parties.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, as prime minister, bears ultimate political responsibility for October 7, remains at the helm of the Likud. Gadi Eisenkot, who served as IDF chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, during years when the policy of containing Hamas became entrenched, heads Yashar.

Avigdor Liberman, who has held senior government positions for much of the past quarter-century, heads Yisrael Beytenu. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid have both occupied senior decision-making positions for more than a decade.

This is not to suggest that all bear equal responsibility for October 7. They clearly do not. But they are veteran figures who have been involved, to varying degrees, in shaping the policies that brought Israel to where it is today.

Granted, their parties include new faces – survivors of October 7, bereaved relatives, reservists, and leaders of civil society – but those people generally appear farther down the lists. The familiar figures remain at the top.

A clean sweep this is not. Look at the lists, and one conclusion is inescapable: Many of those who were there then will be back again.

Winter’s slate includes Arab-Israeli public diplomacy activist Yoseph Haddad, who took a leading role in countering anti-Israel propaganda when the state institutions responsible for doing so dropped the ball; Laly Derai, who emerged as an articulate and moving public voice after her son, Sgt. First Class Saadia Derai, was killed in Gaza; former Channel 13 journalist Netali Shem Tov, a Metula resident evacuated from her home because of Hezbollah fire; and Sigal Kraunik, whose husband, Arik, was killed defending Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7.

At the launch, Derai explained what drove her into politics. On the morning of October 7, she said, one painful truth became clear: “We had become so preoccupied with sharpening our positions against one another that we sharpened the pencil until there was no pencil. And the enemy saw it.”

Predictably, the list immediately came under attack for its members’ lack of political and diplomatic experience.

“There will be those who say that we lack experience,” Winter said at the party’s launch. “Fine – we have already seen where that experience has led us.”

Experience is a tremendous card to play when things are going well. But after the catastrophic surprise attack on October 7, with Israel’s international standing deteriorating and its wars with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran still unresolved, experience can look less like an asset than baggage – especially when it is experience in pursuing failed policies.

That is Winter’s niche. Before October 7, a slate without familiar political figures might have been a liability. Now its candidates can say: We were not there. We did not create this mess. Give us a chance to clean it up.

The first polls capture both Winter’s appeal and the uncertainty surrounding his party. Channel 13 had POI below the electoral threshold; Walla gave it six seats and pushed Smotrich below the threshold; i24NEWS gave Winter eight and Smotrich four. The range – from zero to eight – shows only that Winter has injected an unpredictable element into the race. And Netanyahu is worried.

Winter made clear that he is firmly on the Right and wants to establish a broad right-wing government with Zionist parties. But he did not mention Netanyahu. He did not say that Netanyahu was his candidate for prime minister.

If Winter wins eight seats, and neither the Netanyahu nor the Eisenkot bloc can form a coalition, those seats could become pivotal. What if Liberman, with his expected nine or 10 seats, becomes the key to forming a right-wing government without Netanyahu? What if Winter conditions his participation in any future coalition on the Yisrael Beytenu leader becoming prime minister?

This scenario is remote but not inconceivable.

Winter has long enjoyed good relations with both Liberman and Bennett. During 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, he got into trouble for holding unauthorized conversations with Bennett, then economy minister, about the military campaign. Later, he served as military secretary to Liberman when Liberman was defense minister.

When Winter was released from the IDF in 2024 after repeatedly being passed over for a promotion, both men publicly defended him. Bennett called him “one of the best field commanders in the IDF,” while Liberman said that if Winter had been the head of the Southern Command on October 7, that disaster would not have happened.

NETANYAHU’S more immediate concern is not whom Winter might recommend as prime minister. It is what his candidacy might do to the rest of the right-wing bloc.

If Winter fails to cross the threshold, tens of thousands of right-wing votes could be wasted. If he does cross, he could take enough votes from Smotrich to push the Religious Zionist Party below the line.

Either way, Netanyahu could lose seats from his bloc.

Netanyahu’s warning about wasted votes is obviously self-serving. But it is not invented. Israeli electoral history is littered with parties that won tens of thousands of votes, failed to cross the threshold, and altered the political outcome.

In a video clip uploaded just before Winter announced his new party, Netanyahu went back to 1992 to make his point.

“Let me tell you a story that perhaps some of you don’t know,” he said, sounding as if he were telling a bedtime story.

In that election, the Likud, led by Yitzhak Shamir, faced Labor under Yitzhak Rabin. Several small parties to the Right of Likud ran independently and failed to cross what was then a relatively low 1.5% threshold.

Tehiya received 31,957 votes. Geulat Yisrael received 12,851. Rabbi Moshe Levinger’s Torah Ve’Eretz Yisrael received 3,708. Together, those three parties won 48,516 votes – worth two seats, potentially enough to have enabled Shamir to form the government.

Instead, Rabin formed the government, leading to the Oslo process and, as Netanyahu framed it in his video, “the rest is well known – thousands and thousands of casualties.”

The prime minister, however, did not need to go back 34 years to make the point. He could have stopped at April 2019.

In that election, Bennett and Ayelet Shaked’s New Right received 138,598 votes – just over 1,400 votes short of the threshold. Feiglin’s Zehut won another 118,031 votes and also failed to enter the Knesset.

Together, the two parties burned more than 256,000 votes, most of them from the Right.

The parties aligned with Netanyahu won 60 seats without Liberman. Liberman’s refusal to join the coalition was the immediate reason Netanyahu could not form a government. But had either the New Right or Zehut crossed the threshold, the parliamentary arithmetic would almost certainly have been different, and Netanyahu might have been able to overcome Liberman’s veto.

Instead, Israel entered a cycle of five elections in less than four years.

Netanyahu learned from that experience.

For years, one of his favored election tactics was to cannibalize the smaller parties on the Right. In the closing days of a campaign, he would warn that the Likud was in danger of losing and urge right-wing voters to abandon the satellite parties and rally around him.

The tactic helped the Likud grow, but it carried an obvious risk: siphoning away too many voters and one of the smaller parties falling below the threshold, taking all those votes with it.

After April 2019, Netanyahu increasingly cast himself not only as leader of the Likud but as the conductor of the entire right-wing bloc. His tactic changed. Instead of cannibalizing the smaller parties, he pushed them to merge, brokered joint lists and offered inducements to persuade potentially dangerous competitors to drop out.

He played a central role in engineering the joint runs of Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Maoz, ensuring that their votes would not be lost. At other times, he used reserved places on the Likud list as currency to absorb politicians from smaller parties or encourage mergers.

It was an effective strategy. But it was built for the political world that existed before October 7. The question is whether it will work in the world that came after.

Netanyahu is again telling right-wing voters that they must vote strategically, that they cannot afford political adventures, and that only experienced leadership can protect the Right from electoral defeat.

Winter is telling those same voters that the experienced leadership is precisely what brought Israel to its present condition.

And therein lies the clash.

Netanyahu can point to 1992 and 2019 and warn about what happens when right-wing votes are wasted. Winter can point to October 7 and ask what happens when political leaders fail to live up to the trust the public placed in them.

It remains far from clear whether Winter can turn that sentiment into a durable political force. New parties rise quickly in Israel and often disappear just as fast.

His lack of political experience may eventually prove to be exactly the liability his critics say it is.

But for now, during this lingering “sweep the bums out” moment, it is also his strongest selling point.

Winter is betting that the public wants a fresh start. Netanyahu is betting that, when voters enter the polling booth, fear of wasting their votes will outweigh their desire for something new.

Two months before the election, it is not at all clear which wager will win out.