Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked and Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel announced July 28 that their respective parties — Yamina and Derech Eretz — will run together at the upcoming Nov. 1 general elections, under the name "the Zionist Spirit." In recent surveys, Yamina polled bellow the 3.25% Knesset-entry threshold. Shaked hopes that the alliance with Hendel will get both parties into the parliament.

According to a July 24 poll, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud gets 35 Knesset seats, largely preserving its status as the biggest party in the Knesset. But contrary to the solid Likud, the non-Netanyahu right is shaky. Thus, once again, it is trying to reinvent itself.

In the last three years, several right-wing parties were founded, including Yamina, the New Right, Derech Eretz and New Hope. All were established with great fanfare, only to crash at the polls. None succeeded in achieving real political clout.

This was true also for former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s Yamina. Although Bennett served for more than a year as premier, his party never managed to grow in popularity. On the contrary. Resignation of two Yamina members, who preferred to support the opposition, brought about the downfall of the government. These moves were why Bennett decided to not to run at the next elections, handing over the broken Yamina party to Shaked.