The National Unity party is working to position its chairman, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, as the only viable candidate for prime minister if the right-wing bloc fails to win an outright majority in the Knesset, Israel Hayom reported Monday. According to the report, published on the eve of Israel’s fifth election in less than four years, should the Right fail to garner an outright majority in the Knesset, Gantz’s National Unity list is planning to initially embrace Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s bid to form a government. The National Unity party will, under the plan, attempt to secure support for Lapid to be the first candidate to receive a mandate from President Isaac Herzog to form a government. Should Lapid fail to cobble together a 61-seat majority for a center-left government, as Gantz has suggested publicly, the National Unity party would veto attempts to bring in the Hadash-Ta’al party, part of the former Joint Arab List. After Lapid’s 28-day mandate to form a government expires, the president would then nominate the next candidate he believes most likely able to form a coalition, presumably Benjamin Netanyahu. Without a majority in the right-wing bloc, officials in the National Unity party believe, Netanyahu will be unable to find defectors from the center-left to reach a majority, thus leaving him with no path to 61 seats. Once the mandate for forming a government expires, sending the responsibility for creating a new coalition to the Knesset, the National Unity party plans to form an alliance with haredi lawmakers, giving Gantz a path to a 61-seat majority.