Two polls on Friday showed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party has reduced the gap behind former minister Benny Gantz’s centrist party, which quit the wartime unity government on Sunday.

The polls for the left-wing Ma’ariv daily and the right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper showed Likud winning 21 seats behind the National Unity Party on 24.

The Ma’ariv poll last week showed Mr Gantz’s party on 27 seats, while at the start of the year, it was regularly polling in the high 30s.

The Ma’ariv poll shows the current ruling coalition winning 52 seats in the 120-seat Knesset against 58 for the main opposition parties. The United Arab List and the left-wing Hadash-Ta’al alliance hold the remaining 10 seats.

The Israel Hayom poll put the coalition on 50 seats against 61 for the opposition parties and 9 for the UAL and Hadash-Ta’al.

Both polls showed a majority of voters would prefer Mr Gantz as prime minister in a head-to-head choice with Mr Netanyahu.

However, the Israel Hayom poll showed that if former prime minister Naftali Bennett were to join forces with Avigdor Liberman and Gideon Saar, two other centre-right politicians from outside the Likud camp, their alliance could beat both Likud and Mr Gantz’s National Unity Party.

Mr Gantz, a former army general and defence minister in the last government, joined Mr Netanyahu’s coalition last year as a gesture of national unity following the devastating attack by Hamas on October 7.

However, he clashed repeatedly with other ministers and quit the government after demanding Mr Netanyahu articulate a clear strategic plan for the war in Gaza, now in its ninth month.

Mr Netanyahu, who was widely blamed for the security failures that allowed the October 7 attack to take place, has refused to call early elections and would not normally face voters until 2026 if his coalition with a clutch of religious and right-wing pro-settler parties holds.

(Reuters/NAN)