Former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot has accused fellow Zionist opposition leaders Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid of weakening the bloc by forming their joint electoral slate after rejecting his offer of a three-way “super-party,” in comments published Tuesday.

The Yashar party head, who recently passed Bennett as the lead candidate to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the polls, also reportedly said he would not form a coalition with “detached” far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whom Bennett has touted as a potential partner.

Speaking at a Sunday night campaign event in Yavne, Eisenkot said he had proposed to Bennett and Lapid, who then respectively led the Bennett 2026 and Yesh Atid parties, the formation of “a super-party, a large aircraft carrier of all three parties,” according to audio published by the Walla news site.

Eisenkot said he had conveyed to the two former premiers that “we’ll establish core principles, decide on the people and go forward.”

“There was resistance,” and the offer fell through, Eisenkot added.

In April, as polls put Lapid’s party on the cusp of disappearing, Lapid and Bennett jointly launched the Together party, without Eisenkot.

“I very much respect their decision, though I think it was wrong,” Eisenkot said in the recording published by Walla. “It would have been more correct, in my view, to do a three-way merger in an organized manner.”

Eisenkot said that “ego aside,” he would have joined Bennett and Lapid if he were convinced a three-way merger would help the Zionist opposition........

© The Times of Israel