The Israeli Right does not have a voter problem.
It has a leadership problem. Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein have launched a new formation. Sharren Haskel has created Israel First. Yoaz Hendel and Chili Tropper have created Zionist Home. Ayelet Shaked and Ofer Winter hover over the same political territory. They are competing for versions of the same politically homeless electorate.
With Israel’s threshold at 3.25%, that is not merely vanity. It risks right-wing votes disappearing from the Knesset. Politics is philosophy until Election Day. Then it becomes arithmetic.
The multiplication of these parties is nevertheless hopeful. Israel’s voters may be less confused than its politicians. A real constituency exists for a national, Zionist, security-oriented, classically liberal and democratic right. These Israelis want Jewish sovereignty without apology, military strength without theater, economic freedom, the rule of law and a state that works. They respect Torah study but reject permanent exemptions from national responsibility. They do not want Itamar Ben-Gvir defining the Right or Yair Golan defining the next government. Some still support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Others believe his era must end. They have not become left-wing. They have become politically homeless.
That vacancy did not appear by accident. Likud historically defined itself as a national-liberal movement, combining Jewish nationalism, settlement and security with individual liberty, civil rights, the rule of law and a competitive free market. Its greatness was its breadth. Likud governed Israel because it represented more than one narrow version of the Right.
I believe Netanyahu has accomplished extraordinary things for Israel. Any fair account of his career must acknowledge his diplomatic achievements, his long campaign against Iran, his strategic instincts and his ability to navigate international environments that would have broken less capable leaders. But fairness also requires confronting one central failure of the latter Netanyahu era: he did not preserve the full breadth of the national-liberal movement he inherited. Likud increasingly contracted from a broad political home into a coalition-maintenance system built around one indispensable leader. Dependence on haredi parties pulled it away from shared national responsibility. Dependence on Ben-Gvir allowed one of Israel’s least disciplined politicians to become an international symbol of the entire Right.
The evidence is standing outside Likud. Erdan spent decades in the party. Edelstein was among its most senior leaders. Haskel began her parliamentary career there. When several prominent former Likud figures conclude that the national-liberal Right no longer has a sufficient home inside the party, Likud must ask what it stopped representing. It did not lose these voters because they stopped believing in the Right. It lost them because they stopped recognizing the right they believed in inside Likud. Netanyahu’s great political paradox is that he made himself indispensable to the Israeli Right while allowing the right to become increasingly incapable of surviving him.
But the new leaders do not receive a free pass. They cannot accuse Likud of abandoning the national-liberal right and then divide that constituency into electoral extinction. Put Erdan, Edelstein, Haskel, Hendel, Tropper, Shaked, and perhaps Winter on one serious list, and the names alone look more substantial than any of the parties they are separately building. Together they suggest experience, security credentials, ideological range and enough political weight to matter. Separately, several may never cross the threshold.
To Haskel’s credit, she has recognized this more clearly than most. She has publicly called on other right-wing figures to join forces, shown a willingness to compromise, and refused to make opposition to Netanyahu the organizing principle of her party. A combined formation need not carry her party’s name or put her first. She has simply posed the right question: does this constituency matter more than the chairmanship?
Israel needs a more serious Right
The missing party cannot be Likud without Bibi, Smotrich with better public relations, Ben-Gvir with better English or another centrist vehicle whose only principle is that Netanyahu has served too long. It needs political DNA of its own: security without theater, Zionism without apology, national service without permanent exemptions, economic freedom with a state that functions, and succession without returning to October 6. This is not a softer Right. It is a more serious one.
October 7 did not answer every strategic question. It changed who has to prove his case. Before the massacre, Israelis opposing another territorial experiment were repeatedly asked why Israel should reject the risk. After October 7, anyone asking Israel to accept another irreversible security risk must prove why it will not become another catastrophe. Palestinian sovereignty cannot remain the destination programmed into the diplomatic GPS while Israel debates only the route. The destination itself must be argued again.
A consolidated party would change the architecture of government. It could give Likud a major Zionist partner supporting a right-wing security doctrine while challenging it on national service and coalition dependence. It could make Ben-Gvir optional, work with haredi parties without making exemptions the price of government survival, and make room for Eisenkot inside a Right-led national government without surrendering the Right’s future to an Eisenkot-led coalition dependent on Yair Golan. A broad governing Right can negotiate. A fragmented governing Right gets extorted.
The distinction between Smotrich and Ben-Gvir matters too. I have serious disagreements with Smotrich, especially over haredi conscription, but he is the lesser of the two evils because he understands what political power is for. He has translated ideology into policy. Ben-Gvir deserves credit for expanding civilian access to firearms, but the Right must ask what he has achieved proportionate to the political and reputational price of making him its most visible face. Smotrich should be challenged to govern better. Ben-Gvir should be made unnecessary.
None of this works if Netanyahu believes unity means everyone else must surrender to him. Nobody gets to demand unity only from everybody else. If he wants to lead a broader Zionist government, Ben-Gvir cannot be sacred, permanent haredi exemptions cannot be sacred, and Netanyahu’s own indispensability cannot be sacred. This is the difference between ending the Netanyahu era and finishing it. Ending it means replacing the man. Finishing it means preserving what worked, correcting what failed, demanding accountability for October 7, and leaving behind a Right capable of surviving him.
Netanyahu’s final test is not whether he can remain indispensable. It is whether he can leave behind a Right that no longer needs him. The new leaders face their own test. Somebody has to decide that being number four on a list with 15 mandates matters more than chairing a party with 2.9%. Somebody has to understand that leadership is not always standing in the center of the photograph. You cannot cure political homelessness by building five houses that are all too small to enter.
The voters have created the constituency. October 7 created the strategic mandate. Likud created the political vacancy. Haskel has issued the call for consolidation. The others must decide whether they want to build the missing party or continue auditioning to become its messiah. Israel’s Right does not lack voters. It does not lack ideas. It does not even lack leaders. What it lacks is the humility to put them on one ballot.