Despite persistent public pledges by Yashar party chairman Gadi Eisenkot that he would never sit in a government with Arab parties or rely on their parliamentary support, a dramatic audio recording from a closed-door gathering in the community of Shilat reveals a starkly different operational plan. In the recording, Oshrat Gani Gonen, placed ninth on Eisenkot’s Knesset slate, is heard openly admitting to party activists that their central objective is removing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—even at the cost of establishing a minority government dependent on outside support from Arab factions.
3+“Now, even if we are fewer than 61, we will form the government and will not allow him to remain interim prime minister,” Gani Gonen said. When an attendee pressed her on the arithmetic, pointing out, “That is only possible if the Arabs support it,” Gani Gonen responded without hesitation: “Right, fine, fine. They do not have to be inside it. Ways can be found.”
Addressing objections concerning Yisrael Beitenu chairman Avigdor Liberman’s public rejection of such an alignment, Gani Gonen dismissed his statements: “Liberman said this, and then he said that. In the end, Liberman shares a goal too. The common goal of our entire bloc is to remove Netanyahu. That is the common objective, and then to pass the Defendant’s Law so he cannot serve as prime minister afterward. That is something that must be executed with full force.”
3+The candid admissions behind closed doors directly contradict the public posture Eisenkot maintained throughout the campaign. Yashar’s official messaging has consistently promised voters that it would build a government relying solely on a “distinct Zionist majority.”
Just last month, following claims by Bedouin municipal leaders that Eisenkot had promised to govern alongside Ra’am, the Yashar leader moved swiftly to deny the reports, stating: “Parties that do not recognize Hamas as a terror organization will not be part of the government.” Facing criticism from Likud that he harbored secret plans to govern with Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated factions, Eisenkot previously maintained that “there is no secret plan.”
3+However, while Eisenkot has sought to assure centrist voters that he would exclude Ra’am, senior figures across his political bloc have signaled the opposite. The Democrats chairman, Yair Golan, has publicly said that governing alongside Ra’am is “natural, right, and proper.” At the same time, political analysts note that the center-left opposition lacks any viable arithmetic path to a coalition without Mansour Abbas’s seats.
3+With polls consistently positioning Ra’am as a critical five-seat parliamentary bloc, the leaked recording demonstrates that behind the official declarations of a Zionist-only coalition, senior figures on Eisenkot’s list are actively contemplating an Arab-backed minority government to unseat Netanyahu.