Former prime minister Naftali Bennett vowed at his inaugural election rally on Tuesday that if elected premier he would enact a constitution for Israel and integrate the country’s disparate school systems in “the greatest social revolution since the state was founded.”

“This will bring us back from being tribes to being a nation,” the right-wing former premier told thousands of supporters at Tel Aviv’s Expo. “One nation – one constitution. One nation – one education. One nation – one state.”

“We’ll unite the nation — that’s my life’s mission,” said Bennett, who is the Zionist opposition’s lead candidate in the next elections.

Bennett said the constitution he enacts would be “in the spirit” of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which says the country will be “a Jewish and democratic state.”

While Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence pledged a constitution before the end of that year, political disagreements pushed the young country to instead adopt a system of quasi-constitutional “Basic Laws” that continues to this day.

Bennett was addressing what organizers estimated were 3,500 people who came to rally for Together, an alliance that the right-wing ex-premier launched on April 26 with Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, head of the centrist Yesh Atid party, as a junior partner.

Packed house at the inaugural Bennett/Lapid rally in Tel Aviv. And free hats pic.twitter.com/iZrDKBIq8l — Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) May 12, 2026

Packed house at the inaugural Bennett/Lapid rally in Tel Aviv. And free hats pic.twitter.com/iZrDKBIq8l

— Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) May 12, 2026

Together is running neck-and-neck with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud to be the largest party in the Knesset in the next elections, according to a poll last week by Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site. The poll also showed neither Bennett’s nor Netanyahu’s blocs would command a majority in parliament without support from the opposing bloc or from Arab parties, whom leaders of both blocs have rejected as potential coalition partners.

Like its smaller allies in the Zionist opposition, Together rails against Netanyahu for seeking to codify exemptions from mandatory military service for Haredi yeshiva students and to avoid a state commission of inquiry into failures surrounding the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023.

Bennett at the rally repeated his pledge that the first act of a government he leads would be to form such a commission.

He also vowed to “put an end to insularity” and unite the national school system, which currently has distinct secular, National Religious, ultra-Orthodox and Arab........

© The Times of Israel