These are some of the issues not occupying the Israeli electorate in advance of voting on October 27th: the plight of Palestinians, the continued occupation of Gaza and persecution of its people, the conduct of the war against Iran and Lebanon, the continued expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, apparently with the connivance of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the damage to Israel’s international standing.
Instead, Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu – and the prospect of a final curtain on the career of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister – are what matter to most voters. The Opposition, nervous of appearing sympathetic to Palestinians, has made them peripheral to the election debate. This has allowed extremist government ministers to trumpet their ethnic cleansing, greater-Israel agenda unchallenged.
Paradoxically, this is not the case in the US, where criticism of Israel’s conduct has been polarising politics in advance of the vital midterm election. And while Netanyahu described his recent Oval Office meeting with US president Donald Trump as “one of the best we’ve ever had”, the longed-for election endorsement was not forthcoming. Neither was a presidential promise to continue the war until Iran was crushed.
Trump has let it be known that he is seriously peeved with his now-sidelined partner over Netanyahu’s failure to ease back on attacks on Iran and Lebanon.
READ MORE
The US public has no taste for further engagement, and its attitude to Israel has soured. A YouGov/Economist survey found recently that half of Americans believe that Netanyahu should have been arrested on his arrival in the country, a view endorsed even by a quarter of Republicans. They see there is no point in hitching the Trump wagon to Netanyahu’s waning star, and certainly no point in promising a pre-election visit to Israel (why not a golf trip to Ireland instead?)
The two men’s increasingly frosty relationship has been much-commented on in Israel and is seen as one of the Israeli leader’s innumerable political challenges in the campaign. His party, Likud, is trailing Opposition favourite, former army chief of staff, and son of Moroccan immigrants, Gadi Eisenkot and his Yashar (Straight) party. Some recent polls put the Yashar-led bloc in advance of Likud’s religious/hard right alliance by 60 to 50 seats, with the bloc of Arab-Israeli parties on 10 seats.
Desperate to maintain his extremist alliance with religious parties and with settlers, Netanyahu encouraged the components of his coalition to rush their unfinished agendas through the Knesset as he announced the election – including deeply unpopular legislation blocking attempts to conscript religious students who had been controversially exempted from compulsory military service.
The issue had become particularly acute during wartime: the IDF says it is short at least 12,000 soldiers, while some 72,000 eligible ultra-Orthodox men are not called up. The law limiting enforcement against Haredi draft evaders was frozen by the High Court shortly after passage.
The Haredi parties’ willingness to continue propping up Netanyahu, if the election maths allows it, may however have been jeopardised by a recent leaked private promise by Netanyahu that when re-elected, he will introduce a “comprehensive conscription bill that meets the IDF’s needs”, adding that anyone who is not studying the Torah “will either be drafted or imprisoned”.
A rush of new illegal settlements was also announced, and other emergency legislation, including measures to “reform” the media and the judicial system, a personal bugbear of Netanyahu’s. The Orban-like judicial reform had provoked large protests over the last couple of years.
Netanyahu’s fear of losing power and of no longer being able to delay his long-running corruption trial is compounded by the Opposition’s determination to establish an inquiry into the events surrounding the Hamas attack and massacre of October 7th, 2023. It is this which has definitively shaped Israel’s politics and the quietude of most voters on Palestinian and human rights issues ever since. Netanyahu’s lame attempts to excuse his inaction and to blame the army have backfired, and few doubt an inquiry will provide a tough reckoning.
Gadi Eisenkot, a former cabinet minister in Netanyahu’s government and respected soldier who lost a son and two nephews in fighting in Gaza, is significantly less hawkish and is widely trusted. But continuity rather than a radical shift of outlook and approach are likely to be the hallmarks of a post-Netanyahu government.
Both Eisenkot and his other leading election rival, settler leader and former prime minister Naftali Bennett, have reiterated opposition to Palestinian statehood and a two-state solution. They have complained of Israel’s “complete loss of control” in the West Bank.
“I have never in all my 66 years said the words ‘Palestinian state’,” said Eisenkot in a TV interview this month. His team has stressed, Haaretz reports, that he is not running on the issue of “peace”, an almost taboo word. If elected, he will not take dramatic steps towards what he prefers to call “separation” from the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s ousting would be welcome, but what comes next may be little better.
