This Week’s Election Revealed a Troubling Truth About Israeli Politics

War Stories By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Fred Kaplan? Oct 30, 20261:17 PM Saeed Qaq/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Israel’s election this week was so close that neither of the contending coalitions—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s or the opposition, led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot—may emerge with the majority needed to govern. The question now is this: Does it matter which side ultimately wins? It depends on the subject. When it comes to whether Israel resumes its war against Iran, the election’s outcome will make some difference. As for curbing the violence of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, it might have a little bit of impact. On the war in Gaza, there is no daylight between the coalitions. And on the prospect of settling the broad conflict between Jews and Palestinians, the election uncloaked an aspect of Israeli politics that will likely worsen tensions, regardless of the final vote count. The key factor is this. Hamas’ murderous raid of Oct. 7, 2023; Israel’s wildly excessive retaliation; and the inability of outside parties to impose an arrangement that ends the war, empowers a peaceful Palestinian Authority, and repairs the devastation in Gaza—all of these acts of ultraviolence and neglect have frozen Israeli politics in a state of seemingly permanent trauma. Hamas will not disarm until Israel withdraws from Gaza; Israel will not withdraw until Hamas disarms. Both positions are, in their way, understandable. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Israelis—even those who were once lefties or pacifists—consider it suicidal to so much as think about surrendering territory to Palestinians, much less negotiating a separate Palestinian state. One surprising outcome of the election made this fact all too clear. Israel’s Arab parties won 19 parliamentary seats—almost twice as many as the 10 they won in the prior election. If either of the two main Jewish candidates—Netanyahu or Eisenkot—invited the Arabs to join his coalition, he would gain more than enough seats to win a majority and thus lead the government. (Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 votes, and Eisenkot’s 48; it takes 61—half of the Knesset’s 120 seats, plus 1—to form a majority.) However, neither politician is likely to do that. Netanyahu has no desire to court the favor of Arabs, and even if he did for the sake of retaining power, he would probably lose as many far-right partners from his coalition as he would gain. Eisenkot, while not quite as extreme on the matter, promised before the election not to form coalitions with parties that don’t formally declare Israel to be a Jewish state—a stance that was widely (and accurately) taken to mean an oath not to partner with Arab parties. The Arab parties do not represent the roughly 5 million Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank; those residents of occupied territories lack the right to vote in Israeli elections at all. Rather, they were supported by the 2.1 million Arabs who live in Israel proper—and almost all of them are Sunni Muslims, Christian Arabs, or Druze. Over the years, Israelis have fended off charges that they live in an apartheid state by pointing to the equal rights held by these Arabs. Yet, in a season when the Arab parties have won enough seats to make them potential kingmakers, the Jewish parties—their leaders, and to a great extent their constituents—have decided, at least for now, that they’d rather forgo certain victory if it meant giving Arabs positions in the government. This blatant denial of political power to Israeli Arabs, even when they’ve earned it through peaceful democratic means, would further isolate Israel from its allies—and could radicalize Israeli Arabs who until now were content with working within their country’s political system. The double standard has always been there, but now it’s too obvious to pretend away or disguise. The question of whether the election will make a difference when it comes to Jewish settlers’ violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is more complicated. Eisenkot has spoken out against the government’s tolerance—in many instances blithe encouragement—of the violence. If Netanyahu is thrown out of power, so will his main henchmen on this issue, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the minister of national security and the finance minister, respectively, who believe that Gaza and the West Bank should be formally annexed. However, while Eisenkot has opposed annexation, he is in favor of continued—even expanded—occupation. And to the extent the occupation is a root cause of the tensions and violence in the area, its problems will persist. On other matters, Netanyahu and his Jewish opponents differ more distinctly. Netanyahu—who has been prime minister, on and off, for 19 years, longer than any other in Israel’s 78 years as a nation-state—has clearly stated that he wants to resume full-scale war on Iran for the purpose of changing its regime. Eisenkot has dismissed regime change as a fantasy and has said he’d prefer to sway Tehran’s behavior—away from supporting terrorist groups and developing nuclear weapons—through economic pressure. Still, Netanyahu remains prime minister until the election is settled, and if he decides to start bombing Iran again, and if Iran bombs Israel in return, Eisenkot—the former top general of Israel’s military—would not likely oppose further retaliation against Iran. Some speculate that under those circumstances, he might accept calls to form a “unity government,” joining the two coalitions. It would be a tenuous, probably short-lived government, since the two leaders—and their followers—hate each other, but it would presumably be a popular move for the short term. However, this is theoretical speculation, as Netanyahu is unlikely to resume bombing unless he gets at least the green light, if not active cooperation, from Donald Trump. The American president has said he might start bombing again after next week’s midterm elections—a telling qualifier. He wouldn’t do so before the midterms because he knows that the war is unpopular and that its resumption could wreck the Republicans’ already-slim chance of hanging on to the House—and possibly to the Senate as well. No one knows what Trump may do after the midterms; perhaps Trump himself doesn’t know. If the Republicans lose, especially if they lose big, will he take that as a sign to steer away from Middle East wars, as he long ago promised voters he would do? Will a Democratic Congress vote to forbid him from resuming attacks on Iran (as the narrowly Republican-controlled Congress almost did)? Will Trump abide by that vote or ignore it as a violation of his Article 2 powers? Trump endorsed Netanyahu in these elections and, as a result, will no doubt take credit—perhaps legitimately—for the prime minister’s Likud party winning a larger share of votes than the polls, and even exit polls, had predicted (though far fewer than it won in the previous election). However, what happens next is beyond Trump’s control. If neither faction can form a majority, then new elections would have to be called. In the interim, Netanyahu would remain prime minister, but his supporters would form only a minority of parliament. This gridlock could persist for months. The stalemate would hobble the state, which might compel Netanyahu and his opponents to make some kind of deal, either with each other or with the Arab parties. Or maybe they won’t be able to pull off such a feat. The divisions in Israeli politics and society may be too severe to mask—and any deal could aggravate tensions among the coalitions’ constituents. The region’s wars have hit a lull in recent weeks, but they are far from over. The dynamics unleashed by the elections—Israel’s and ours—could extend the calm or recharge the violence. Donald Trump Iran Israel Palestine