When MK’s Yuli Edelstein and Yair Lapid sat down separately for interviews on Channel 12’s Meet the Press Saturday night, the expectation was that viewers would hear two sharply different diagnoses of Israeli politics.
After all, the two men come from opposite sides of the political divide.
Edelstein spent more than two decades in Likud before announcing Friday that he was leaving the party to forge what he called “a new political path.”
Lapid built his political career largely around opposing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has become one of the prime minister’s fiercest political rivals.
Yet the most revealing aspect of the two interviews was not where the two men disagreed. It was where they unexpectedly converged.
October 7 fundamentally changed the country’s political priorities
Listen carefully to what each of them said, and an emerging picture of Israeli politics begins to take shape.
Both argued, albeit in different language, that October 7 fundamentally changed the country’s political priorities.
Both repeatedly returned to the issue of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) conscription.
Both accepted, either explicitly or implicitly, that Israeli society has shifted significantly to the Right.
Both spoke about the need for broader Zionist political frameworks rather than the familiar bloc politics that has dominated Israel for much of the last six years.
And perhaps most strikingly, neither spent much time refighting the political battles that defined Israeli politics between 2019 and October 7.
That convergence may ultimately prove more significant than anything either man said individually.
For years, Israeli politics revolved around one overriding question: Are you for Benjamin Netanyahu or against him?
That question has hardly disappeared. Netanyahu remains the central figure in Israeli politics, and every election involving him inevitably becomes, to some degree, a referendum on his leadership.
Who can assemble a governing coalition after the election?
But Saturday night’s interviews suggested that another question is gradually overtaking it. Who can assemble a governing coalition after the election?
That is a very different political conversation.
It also helps explain why Edelstein’s decision to leave Likud matters far beyond the departure of one veteran MK. Politicians switch parties all the time. Israeli politics is full of examples.
The significance of Edelstein’s announcement lies not in the move itself, but in the explanation he offered for making it.
He did not argue that he could no longer win a Likud primary. Quite the opposite. He reminded viewers that throughout his political career, from the time he first entered the Knesset until serving as Knesset speaker, he had always emerged successfully from internal party contests.
His problem, he explained, would come afterward.
“If you succeed in the primaries,” he said, “you have to stand on the stage and say, ‘Vote Likud. We will...’ And I don’t know how to finish that sentence.”
That may have been the most revealing line of the evening.
Edelstein wasn’t saying he had ceased being a man of the Right. Throughout the interview, he repeatedly emphasized that he remains committed to settlement, judicial reform, a free economy, and a hawkish security policy.
Edekstein can no longer defend LIkud's current agenda
What he said he could no longer defend was the Likud’s current agenda.
His criticism focused overwhelmingly on one issue: the government’s handling of haredi conscription.
Asked about the proposed Basic Law: Torah Study, which passed its first reading in the Knesset last week, Edelstein stressed that he supports Torah study. His objection, he said, was that the legislation was designed to protect draft evaders at precisely the moment the IDF says it urgently needs thousands of additional soldiers.
Notice the argument he made. It was not framed primarily as one of equality. It was framed as a matter of national security.
Again and again, the discussion returned to the army’s manpower needs. October 7 hovered over nearly every answer.
So did another phrase Edelstein used repeatedly: “a responsible Right.”
He noted that Israeli society has moved to the Right and that a large public is now looking for a political home that combines conservative positions on security and diplomacy with a willingness to address issues such as haredi conscription and government responsibility.
Politicians reveal a great deal by describing the electorate they believe now exists, so whether that diagnosis proves accurate is almost beside the point.
Lapid argues Israel needs a leader from the right, throws support behind Bennett
AND THAT brings us to Lapid’s interview, which was just as revealing as Edelstein’s.
For years, Lapid positioned himself as Netanyahu’s principal challenger from the political center. Yet listening to him Saturday night, what stood out was not an argument that Israel needs a centrist prime minister.
It was almost the opposite. He argued repeatedly that Israel now needs “a leader from the Right.” And who did he identify as that leader?
Not himself. Naftali Bennett.
That is an extraordinary statement for the founder of Yesh Atid. Lapid was not suddenly abandoning his political convictions. Rather, he appeared to acknowledge the same political reality that Edelstein described more explicitly: October 7 shifted the country’s political center of gravity.
Instead of trying to persuade Israelis to move back toward the political center, Lapid is adapting to where he believes Israelis already are.
He also introduced another concept that deserves attention.
He spoke about building what he called a “national camp,” as opposed to the non-national camp, in which he placed United Torah Judaism head Yitzhak Goldknopf.
The phrase immediately recalled Edelstein’s repeated calls for a “broad Zionist government.”
The two men are obviously not describing identical political coalitions. Lapid is trying to replace Netanyahu. Edelstein deliberately avoided saying whether Netanyahu could ultimately head such a government, insisting instead that the coalition be built around agreed-upon principles rather than personalities.
But listen beneath the labels.
The definition of Israeli politics has changed from Left, Right to fundamental issues
Both men are increasingly defining Israeli politics not through the traditional categories of Left and Right, but through questions of national responsibility, military service, ability to govern, and Zionist consensus.
That, by itself, marks a significant change.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Lapid’s interview, however, was not what he said. It was what he didn’t say.
For years, Netanyahu’s criminal trial occupied the center of Israel’s political conversation. The anti-Netanyahu camp repeatedly argued not merely that they opposed his policies, but that a prime minister standing trial for crimes such as bribery should not continue leading the country.
Yet during nearly 20 minutes on television Saturday night, Lapid never once built his argument around the indictments.
Instead, he spoke about education. Military service. October 7. Coalition-building. Bennett. Creating a new national camp. The trial was conspicuously absent.
One should be careful not to read too much into a single interview. Perhaps it simply reflected the direction the conversation took. Perhaps Lapid consciously chose to emphasize other issues. Perhaps it had to do with the judges in Netanyahu’s trials suggesting again last week that the prosecution drop the bribery charge.
Whatever the reason, the omission was striking. And noteworthy. Indicative, perhaps, that the country’s political conversation is moving beyond the Netanyahu indictments and trial.
Perhaps because, as Netanyahu would have everyone believe, the cases against him no longer appear as compelling as they once did. Or perhaps because many Israelis have simply stopped seeing them as the country’s defining political issue.