In a new poll published Thursday, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party emerged as the second-largest for the first time, overtaking Naftali Bennett’s yet-unnamed party and trailing only Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud.

The survey published by Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, gave Eisenkot 16 seats, up from 15 last week and 12 three weeks ago.

Bennett, who has long been seen as the leading challenger to Netanyahu, and whose party has consistently been projected as the largest in the opposition and second-largest overall, fell from 17 seats last week to 15 this week.

The results also showed Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid collapsing to just 5 seats, down one seat from last week, in its lowest showing yet in Zman Yisrael polls. It marks a major decline for what is currently the Knesset’s leading opposition faction and second-largest faction overall with 24 seats.

As for the remaining anti-Netanyahu parties, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu remained at 10 seats, while Yair Golan’s left-wing Democrats gained one seat to reach 9.

While the opposition bloc technically saw a decrease from 56 seats last week to 55 this week, Benny Gantz’s Blue and White managed to cross the electoral threshold this week, which it failed to do last week, adding another four seats to the equation.

Though Gantz has waffled over whether he would join a government with Netanyahu, the potential addition of his four seats to the opposition bloc would give........

© The Times of Israel