Five sitting lawmakers from the centrist Yesh Atid party declared over the past week that they would not run for the Knesset in the upcoming election as part of the joint slate B’Yachad, led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett, as declining poll figures leave many without realistic reelection chances.
The announcements came ahead of B’Yachad’s unveiling of its candidate list, set for Sunday, two days before the deadline for parties to submit their final electoral slates. It will mark a significant moment as it determines which members of Yesh Atid — currently the Knesset’s largest opposition faction — receive realistic spots on a list that has fallen substantially in opinion surveys in recent months.
According to Channel 12, the agreement forming B’Yachad allocated Bennett’s party roughly four of every seven places on the joint slate, with Yesh Atid receiving three, amounting to six Yesh Atid candidates in the first 14 spots. Bennett heads the alliance, with Yair Lapid in the No. 2 spot.
Having slumped to not far above the 3.25% electoral threshold in some polls, Yesh Atid, which won 24 seats in the 2022 election, merged earlier this year with Bennett’s new Bennett 2026 party to create B’Yachad, which itself has since lost significant ground and is now expected to win 13-15 seats amid Gadi Eisenkot’s rise with his Yashar party, expected to win 22-26 seats.
