Israel’s biggest political parking lot is named “Naftali Bennett.” Polls conducted in recent weeks consistently give his Yamina party 20 Knesset seats and more. In the March elections, he barely garnered six seats (of 120), which dropped to five after Rabbi Rafi Peretz split off from the party. Bennett’s current 20-plus seats in the polls consist of many disenchanted voters from other parties. Although a right-wing ideologue, Bennett, so it seems, has siphoned off voters from the centrist Blue and White party (worth an estimated 6-7 seats), from the ruling Likud (worth at least 10) and from a variety of parties across the political spectrum.

The draw of Bennett’s “parking lot” for these disparate voters lies in the coronavirus crisis. He comes across as just what the country needs to lead it to safety with his proven entrepreneurship, creativity and abilities — as just about everything that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not.

Results of a Channel 13 News poll aired Oct. 18 indicate for the first time in the current era a new, theoretical constellation that could reshape Israel’s political arena. The numbers suggest that the combined votes of Bennett’s Yamina, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu and the Gantz-led Blue and White add up to a slim Knesset majority that could form a coalition government. The poll gave Bennett a record 24 seats (just three fewer than Netanyahu’s Likud), Lapid moved up to 21, while Liberman and Gantz remained steady at eight each.

Adding these numbers, we get 61 seats, i.e., a majority in the 120-seat legislature. This would enable the formation of an Israeli government without the Likud and its allied ultra-Orthodox parties for the first time in over a decade without risking the explosive “leftist” label that is a nonstarter for some of the above-mentioned players and without having to rely on the Arab parties, which are anathema to all of them.