Israel’s Center Wants Democrats Back. It May Not Have The Cards.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Parties representing Israel’s center are trying to win back U.S. Democrats with a promise: We’ve got a path to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu and change Israel for the better.

But the political strategy they’re pursuing to oust the Israeli prime minister — forging alliances with right-wing figures who share many of his hawkish positions — could make that promise harder to deliver.

With Israeli elections looming by October and Democratic support for Israel plunging, opposition leaders are betting that Netanyahu’s exit alone will be enough to reset ties with Washington. Interviews with Israeli politicians, advisers and U.S. officials suggest the reality may be more complicated.

One centrist party, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, announced Sunday it had merged with right-wing leader Naftali Bennett’s party to form the “Together” party — aimed at voting Netanyahu out of office. Other such mergers could follow.

Should the center-right alliance oust Netanyahu, figures like Lapid would gain significant leadership positions in a new government. There would be limits to what they can accomplish in such a broad alliance, but they argue it’s the best hope for ushering in the kinder, gentler Israel the Democratic Party is asking for.

They’re taking this message primarily to more moderate Democrats, rather than the party’s progressive wing.

“Our target for the Democratic Party, at least initially, isn’t going to start with the far left, it’s going to start with the moderates that we’re losing,” said one Israeli opposition party official. “Before we start thinking about AOC, we need to start thinking about how we can bring back Rahm Emanuel.”

Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has been one of the earliest and loudest members of Congress censuring the Israeli government. But even the more moderate Emanuel, who worked on Israel’s Iron Dome defense system as chief of staff to President Barack Obama, made waves when he told Bill Maher earlier this month that Israel should not receive U.S. taxpayer funds for weapons purchases.

Emanuel said in an interview that he did not hear from any Israeli political figures after that appearance, and stressed that Israel’s relationships need rebuilding across the world and political parties.

“The right question is not whether they repair relations with Democrats, it’s whether they repair relationships with the public in Europe and the United States,” he said. “Now, I think on the present course, it tells you everything you need to know, because I don't see any way of changing.”

Eighty percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents currently have an unfavorable view of Israel, compared with 69 percent last year and 53 percent in 2022, according to a Pew Research Center poll releasedthis month. That shift has translated to Congress, where a record 85 percent of Senate Democrats recently voted to block U.S. weapons sales to Israel — a condition many of them tied explicitly to Netanyahu’s government.

But Israel’s centrists hope they can attribute directly to Netanyahu the Israeli actions in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon that led to this erosion of support.

“One of the things a new government will have to do is to push as much of this baggage down the trash compactor” as possible, said one person advising an opposition candidate, referring to getting rid of Netanyahu and his controversial policies all at once. The person, like others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about political strategy.

Lapid argued in an interview that he maintains relationships needed to keep Democrats in the U.S. invested in Israel.

"The larger portion of Democrats are still the kind of people I know how to talk with. And of course, that’s true on the Republican side as well,” Lapid said. “And what was missing in the equation is an Israeli government that is preoccupied with this, committed to, focused on its importance for our national security."

In announcing his decision to join with right-wing leader and former Prime Minister Bennett, he said the merger was the best chance to win the elections. He likened the alliance to what happened in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban was ousted earlier this month by an alliance of opposition parties led from the right.

Lapid and Yair Golan, who leads Israel’s left, maintain regular phone call communication with Democrats and their staff, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Lapid, Golan and their staff also engage with visiting delegations to Israel sent by Democratic organizations like J Street, the dovish pro-Israel group with deep ties to the Democratic Party.

Still, the conversations have been low-key, with no flurry of anxious phone calls or meetings, three of the people said. One of the opposition figures said there are limits to what people like Lapid, Golan, Bennett and others can do while not in government. Their primary focus is on winning the elections later this year, with the hope the rest can follow.

“It's a difficult, delicate thing to do — what you can and can't do from the opposition,” the person said. “Our basic theory of the case is it'll become easier if we can win the election, if we can bring a government that's more in line with American values, that’s professional and less extremist, then people will respond accordingly.”

Ilan Goldenberg, chief policy officer of J Street, led a trip of senior Democratic foreign policy experts to Israel last summer and is taking another delegation soon. He said that even an Israeli government without Netanyahu would only be the first step on a long road to repairing the relationship with Democrats.

“Netanyahu leaving would create an opportunity, but these new Israeli leaders will have to follow through with action if they really want to start changing the relationship with the Democratic Party,” he said.

That would include doing much more to stop Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, taking immediate steps to do more to improve peoples’ lives in Gaza, prioritizing diplomacy to address security concerns in Lebanon and doing the same in Iran rather than drawing the U.S. into conflict there, he said.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), a longtime supporter of Israel who has become increasingly critical as Netanyahu has pursued harder-line security policies and moved to weaken the country’s independent courts, said Israel’s leaders have a long way to go to rebuild ties with her party.

“I have been deeply disappointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, whose conduct in recent years has done real damage to the longstanding bipartisan support for Israel in the United States and raised serious concerns among Democrats,” said Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Repairing that trust will require a renewed commitment to democratic principles, restraint and a serious effort to pursue lasting peace and stability in the region.

That may be out of reach for the Israeli parties courting the Democrats.

Israeli politics has long been dominated by two schools of thought: a center and left-wing that backs a negotiated two-state solution, and a right that prioritizes Jewish sovereignty over the West Bank and rejects Palestinian statehood. The former has drawn backing from groups like J Street, while the latter has built closer ties with Republicans and evangelical conservatives.

But a deeper political shift inside Israel has changed that dynamic — and the centers of power. The left-wing Jewish Israeli parties that once anchored ties with Democrats have faded almost entirely, and the remaining center has lost ground to a more dominant right.

At the same time, Israel's public has become more conservative, a shift driven by demographic change, the collapse of a peace process in the early 2000s and the trauma of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

Israel's left has struggled to remain a force in politics as a result. The Labor and Meretz parties, which together won 44 percent of the vote in 1992, are now a shadow of their former selves: Meretz didn’t get enough votes to make it into parliament in 2022. Labor scraped in with four seats, and in 2024 the two parties were forced to merge into a single faction, the Democrats, to stave off extinction.

The parties that identify as centrist have not fared much better. Once-formidable vehicles like Lapid’s Yesh Atid party and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White have shed support cycle after cycle, and the centrist space is increasingly being filled not by traditional liberal parties but by figures migrating in from the right.

Bennett, whom current polling shows as Netanyahu’s main challenger, has repeatedly and recently stated his opposition to a Palestinian state, a top priority for Democrats.

“One of the liberal leaders, Bennett or Lapid or Gadi Eisenkot, will need to work on connecting Israel back to the bipartisan situation,” said another person advising an opposition politician. “I believe that the basic core values and the special relationship are so strong — the center is the center everywhere.”

Shelly Tal Meron, a member of Lapid’s Yesh Atid party who led the Hostage Caucus in the Knesset and forged close working relationships with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, argued that Netanyahu is the one that has weakened those historic ties.

“I really feel bad with what this government has done through our relations with the United States, especially when it comes to the Democrats,” Meron said. “I don't know what this government is doing with Democrats. They’re ignoring them.”

Per Israeli law, the country must go to parliamentary elections by late October. That could happen sooner if Netanyahu’s coalition collapses or he moves to seek an earlier date. Many Israeli political operatives expect that the elections will happen in October, though some say September is possible, according to the first adviser and three others involved with the process.

Netanyahu’s Likud party has taken a hit in recent polls on the back of the unpopular Iran ceasefire, boosting the fortunes of the anti-Netanyahu bloc. These polls show that the anti-Netanyahu bloc has an edge but would need defectors from Netanyahu’s camp or the support of Israeli Arab parties to cobble together the 61 seats needed to form a majority government.

At the same time, the narrative developing across Israel is that the relationship with the U.S. Democratic Party is beyond repair.

“In Israel, the overwhelming perspective portrayed by everybody, whether it's Netanyahu or the mainstream media, is Democrats as having become just irreparably, irredeemably anti-Israel,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political strategist and public opinion expert who lives in Tel Aviv and has advised centrist and left-wing parties in the country.

The onetime natural alliance between Israel’s center and left and Democrats may also not survive the ways that Netanyahu and President Donald Trump have governed, she said.

“Between Trump and Netanyahu, they're turning the whole concept of liberal democracy on its head, both for America and Israel, calling into question whether the world runs on that currency anymore.”