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Now, Mr. Lapid’s stunning success

is being viewed by many voters, activists and analysts here as a victory for the secular mainstream in the intensifying identity battle gripping the country.

the widespread draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox, integrating them into the work force, and shifting the balance of who pays taxes and who receives government aid.

Benjamin Netanyahu's run as the longest-serving Israeli prime minister may be coming to an end. Naftali Bennett, leader of the small right-wing party Yamina, announced Sunday evening he is working toward a coalition agreement with Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist party Yesh Atid, to join a new government.

"After four elections and a further two months, it has been proven to all of us that there is simply no right-wing government possible that is headed by Netanyahu. It is either a fifth election or a unity government," Bennett said.

The "change" coalition will likely be made up of parties from the right to the left of Israeli politics, but it would still almost certainly need some sort of outside support to reach the 61-seat threshold. That support may come from outside the government, such as one of the Arab parties, most likely the Islamist United Arab List, led by Mansour Abbas.

Maj-Gen Yair Golan said on the eve of Thursday's annual Holocaust Day that he detected trends in Israeli society suggestive of "nauseating processes" that occurred in 1930s Nazi Germany.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said he had "total confidence" in Gen Golan.

"There is, after all, nothing easier and simpler than hating the foreigner... arousing fears and terrifying."

this Third Intifada isn’t really led by Palestinians in Ramallah. It’s led by the European Union in Brussels and other opponents of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank across the globe. Regardless of origin, though, it’s becoming a real source of leverage for the Palestinians in their negotiations with Israel.

Finance Minister Yair Lapid told Israel Army Radio on Monday that if no two-state solution is reached with the Palestinians, “it will hit the pocket of every Israeli.” Israel’s economy depends on technology and agricultural exports to Europe and on European investments in its high-tech industries.

According to Lapid, even a limited boycott that curbed Israeli exports to Europe by 20 percent would cost Israel more than $5 billion a year and thousands of jobs. That’s why he added: “Israel won’t conduct its policy based on threats. But to pretend that the threats don’t exist, or that they’re not serious, or it’s not a process happening in front of us, is also not serious.”

Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan said Monday that Israel’s security situation on the northern border has improved as a result of the Syrian civil war, which has served to drain the blood of Hezbollah.

“Republicans are in trouble,” said Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster who has written a book on millennial voters. Election results show millennials holding onto their Democratic views as they age, she said. “It would not surprise me if the problem is worse, not better, with Gen Z, given the moment we’re in.”

Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia, and Yair Ghitza, the chief scientist at Catalist, have found that impressions about events from ages 14 to 24 are about three times as powerful in shaping political beliefs as events that happen when people are 40

President Trump’s low approval rating does not bode well for the Republican Party with young people who’ve been exposed to little else, Mr. Gelman said. But he cautioned that the Democratic brand isn’t particularly popular today either.

It includes eight parties, drawn from the hard right, the left and the center — and one Arab party. A more intuitive governing coalition would have comprised only of parties on the right, which together hold a slim majority of Israel’s Parliament.

Netanyahu — like Trump, his ally in global affairs — is the subject of serious allegations of abuse of government. Prosecutors indicted Netanyahu on corruption charges in 2019, and the trial has been delayed partly because of Covid-19 restrictions.

His attempts to fend off the charges and remain in power have left many Israelis worried about a collapse in judicial independence and the rule of law, much as Democrats were anxious about Trump’s norm-breaking, as David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy explained to me. But there is also a big difference: While Republicans have overwhelmingly stood by Trump, a meaningful number of Netanyahu’s ideological allies have chosen to break with him.

Negotiations continued Monday in Israel over an unlikely political coalition poised to dethrone the country's longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

he attempt to put an end to Netanyahu's rule, publicly announced Sunday night by hard-right party leader Naftali Bennett, has been welcomed by a surprising cross-section of left-wing and right-wing Israelis, as Netanyahu and his allies fight fiercely to keep him in power ahead of a looming Wednesday deadline for a new coalition to be reached.

The two would take turns as prime minister if the fragile coalition manages to hold for long enough, with Bennett going first.

A coalition of Israeli political parties announced Wednesday night they had agreed ​to a deal to form a new government, paving the way for the exit of Israel's longest serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, notified Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that he had managed to cobble together a coalition less than an hour before the midnight deadline.

In a statement, Lapid said the "government will work to serve all the citizens of Israel including those who aren't members of it, will respect those who oppose it, and do everything in its power to unite all parts of Israeli society."