“The Start of a New Beginning” — that was the election slogan of Naftali Bennett’s HaBayit HaYehudi party. “We’ve Come to Make a Change” was the slogan of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party. It’s a well-known fact that in most cases, election slogans have a very brief life. They get tossed onto the political trash heap the day after the voting is over.

But this time, things worked out differently. These two slogans are being put into practice right before our eyes. The alliance between Lapid and Bennett is, without question, new and totally different. It's something we’ve never seen before. At the moment it appears this alliance is changing the face of Israeli politics, by giving it a good shake-up. It remains to be seen whether it will last, how long it will last and what kind of term Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who emerged from the elections battered and humiliated — has in store. The one thing that is clear, however, is that Israel has never had anything like this before.

Lapid and Bennett are actually very similar, but at the same time, they’re very different. Lapid's in his late forties; Bennett is in his early forties. Lapid is a symbol of the deep-rooted secular Israel of yesteryear, which the country’s founders dreamed of creating. Bennett may have been born in Israel, but his parents came here from California, bringing with them an Anglo-Saxon background and an entirely different cultural legacy. Lapid is avowedly secular; Bennet is religious, he wears a crocheted kippah (the symbol of Zionist Modern-Orthodox Judaism). His parents became Orthodox when he was a baby. Bennett was a combat soldier and served as an officer in the Matkal commando unit. Lapid spent his military service as a journalist for the IDF’s Bamahane magazine. Lapid is a political moderate and pragmatist, and he believes in a two-state solution and is willing to give up most of the Territories in exchange for peace. Bennett certainly is not. He believes that it is impossible to create a Palestinian state, and that there's simply no room for two states in the crowded neighborhood between the Jordan River and the Sea.

In theory at least, these two men should be sitting across the political aisle from each other. In reality, they are locked so tightly in their embrace that they could be mistaken for twins, separated at birth. Those things that they have in common are no less formidable than the things that divide them. Both men believe that any differences they have are considerably less urgent, and aren't on the list of chores to deal with immediately. Since Lapid doesn’t believe that there is a real Palestinian partner for peace, there’s no reason to argue over the permanent borders right now. Since even Bennett realizes that it would be impossible to annex “Area C” right now, there’s no reason to argue about it.