Gideon Levy
Haaretz / May 2 2026
Eisenkot, Lapid and Bennett all promise to turn back time, offering up a ‘government of change,’ while continuing the same occupation, apartheid, militarism, wars and military operations, which none of them ever opposed; they were always in favour
On a really good day, the trio purporting to be the political alternative promises to take Israel back two and a half years, to the good old October 6, 2023 that everyone now longs for. How good things were then, with supposedly quiet borders and a deceptive calm, with quiet lawn sprinklers in Ramat Hasharon and a brutal occupation just a few minutes away by car; with foreign tourists, restaurants full of customers and national accomplishments being made at the Eurovision Song Contest.
This is the most the troika promises. For them, it’s enough to return Israel to its good old days, the sane and ostensibly quiet ones before the disaster. Whether they run together or not – what difference does it make? – to the October 6 trio of Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid and Gadi Eisenkot, that promise is everything, all their wishes and promises. “We’ll soon bring better days, together,” Bennett wrote on X Friday, meaning that we’ll return to the pre-disaster days.
This return will never take place. What has happened to Israel since October 7 is irreversible. The genie is out of the bottle, incited by the government of destruction and with the silence of the opposition of destruction, which didn’t lift a finger to stop it. Without radical measures that Bennett or Eisenkot, much less Lapid, cannot take or even dream about now, the road back is blocked. Perhaps forever. The Rubicon was crossed, Israel is a different Israel, presumably irredeemably.
The damage caused by the current government cannot be erased without a drastic change. The violence, fascism, racism, ignorance, messianism and megalomania are here to stay. How exactly will the triumvirate eliminate these? They promise to turn back time, but to continue with the occupation, the apartheid, the militarism, the wars and military operations, which none of them ever opposed; they were always in favour.
Israel will not mend its ways like this. October 7 and what came in its wake destroyed and corrupted the state to its foundations, which is where the repair must begin. The occupation, yes, that accursed and annoying cliche, is at the root of it all, and the gentlemen now promising us a new dawn have no intention of ending it. They say so explicitly. All three are against a two-state solution. A single democratic state is obviously out of the question. So what good can they do? They’ll bolster the Supreme Court president and fire the police commissioner? So what? Others will come, and Israel will again drown in the swamp of apartheid and the occupation.
Their Israel will face the United States, which very soon will drastically change its policy toward Israel, with Europe close behind. Even the public diplomacy “war rooms” set up by the new Foreign Minister Lapid will be of no use, can you believe that? The new Defense Minister Eisenkot will continue doing the only thing he knows, more wars and operations, and the new prime minister will talk in beautiful English to people who no longer want to listen. The world is fed up with Israel, and in order to return to the family of nations it must take some drastic steps, which these three will be incapable of taking. October 6 will not return.
These three indeed are more honest and less corrupt than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Their people will be more skilled and less toxic than the sordid and vacuous gang surrounding their predecessors, but that will not be enough. You won’t hear – and haven’t yet heard – a word about the important steps now required; just trust them that things will be better. Wait one year, and they too will invade Gaza; wait two and they’ll bomb Iran; they’ll also bomb Lebanon, “once and for all,” of course.
It is even doubtful that they will manage to stop the pogroms on the West Bank. It is not they who will be able to cleanse Israel of the festering abscesses of disgust and torrents of evil that have accumulated here in recent years, of the militias in the West Bank, the Brownshirts in Israel and the violence and the ultranationalism that has been deeply embedded in society. They don’t even talk about these.
