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COME OCTOBER, ISRAELIS WILL VOTE ON RULE BY NETANYAHU  
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David B. Green
July 10, 2026
The American Prospect
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_ Replacing him, however, may require having an Arab party in the
government, which is anathema to many Israelis. _

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a Holocaust
Remembrance Day ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in
Jerusalem, April 14, 2026., Ohad Zwigenberg/AP Photo

 

Israel is still waiting for Benjamin Netanyahu to decide on a date for
this year’s parliamentary election, the first since the October 7,
2023, attack and the subsequent Gaza—and Lebanese and
Iranian—wars. The default date would be Tuesday, October 27, the
latest allowed by the law, but there’s reportedly concern in
government circles that the number will stir up unwanted associations
with October 7th, and hurt the chances of the man who, after all, was
in charge when Israel was attacked on that date nearly three years
ago.

While his current government remains in power, Netanyahu is
frantically pushing to enact as much of his domestic agenda as
possible. The Knesset will be adjourning on July 16, and will
reconvene only after the election, but in the remaining days it is in
session, it’s all hands on deck as the government attempts to rush
through the legislative process many of the bills it didn’t succeed
in making law during the past four years. The opposition will block
them when it is numerically possible.

The bills in question include measures that would prevent the arrest
of ultra-Orthodox men who don’t report for military service, and
another that would equalize a range of financial benefits received by
yeshiva students with those of army veterans. Other bills would reduce
the independence and authority of the country’s courts, its legal
establishment, and the electronic media, making them all more
subordinate to the political powers. The trend to make Israeli society
more subject to Jewish religious law also figures prominently in
recent legislation before the Knesset.

Some of these new laws, if passed, will be challenged and likely
overturned on constitutional grounds by the High Court of Justice. But
even such defeat is a form of victory for Netanyahu, as it gives added
credence to the right-wing claim that the court is out of control and
out of touch, ready to defy the legislature and the public that
elected it.

_EVEN IF HE CAN’T WIN, NETANYAHU HAS THE WILL AND THE WILES TO MAKE
SURE THAT NO ONE ELSE DOES EITHER._

The right’s war on the court was ratcheted up on July 5, when
Netanyahu’s justice and communications ministers announced that the
government does not intend to honor a High Court ruling that ordered
the convening of the semi-independent body that must approve the
proposed sale of commercial TV Channel 13. Apparently fearing that the
new owners will push the channel’s news coverage leftward, the
government is throwing up one obstacle after another to block
consummation of the deal.

It seems bizarre that Netanyahu’s government would choose its
unhappiness over the sale of a relatively minor TV channel as the
grounds for initiating a constitutional crisis, but that is precisely
what it will be doing if it defies a High Court ruling. Even the
nation’s generally timid president, Isaac Herzog, condemned the
government’s announcement, calling it “a red line that should not
be crossed under any circumstances.”

IT WOULD NOT BE WRONG TO CHARACTERIZE the upcoming election as a
referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu. In an earlier era, he would not dare
to be running again: He is well into the seventh year of his criminal
trial, with its end still over the horizon. Israel remains involved in
wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran (with its soldiers also occupying a
“buffer zone” inside Syria), with the “total victory” promised
in each conflict now little more than a joke. Yet the premier has
stymied all attempts to convene a state commission of inquiry to
examine how the state was caught unprepared in October 2023.
Israel’s seemingly ironclad, strategic relationships with the U.S.
government and with Diaspora Jewry have both been severely damaged,
and with no obvious gain. And the Netanyahu government’s failure to
deal honestly and realistically with the issue of military service for
Haredi men, roughly 90,000 of whom are now legally considered draft
dodgers, is in keeping with its general refusal to address the
demographic and political non-sustainability of the unique privileges
granted to this rapidly growing community (its annual growth rate is
the highest in the developed world), whose leaders have become
accustomed to having their demands acceded to in return for their
support of the coalition.

Netanyahu, who turns 77 in October, also acknowledged recently that,
several months earlier, he had undergone surgery and radiation
treatment for prostate cancer. He claims to be cured.

You might wonder why Netanyahu thinks he can win this election. The
answer is: Even if he can’t win, Netanyahu has the will and the
wiles to make sure that no one else does either. Between 2019 and
2021, Israel had four successive elections, each ending in a virtual
stalemate. It was only in 2022 that Netanyahu assembled a collection
of pariah parties into a stable coalition, which survived the past
four years because none of its members had anywhere else to go. If he
is unable to do that this time, there’s no reason to think he will
have any compunction about forcing another election, while he remains
in power during the interim.

All of the thorny issues mentioned above will be high on
politicians’ lists of talking points as the campaign proceeds. What
isn’t on the agenda for most of the candidates—and voters—is the
Israel-Palestine conflict. A majority of the electorate may be highly
critical of the way the Gaza war ended—more correctly, didn’t
end—but very few Israelis believe a non-military solution, based on
mutual acceptance between themselves and the Palestinians, is
possible. They certainly don’t want to hear about the number of
Palestinian noncombatants killed in the war, or how many structures in
the Gaza Strip were left standing. Hard as it may be to believe, for
most Israeli Jews, the criticism by so much of the Western world of
Israel’s conduct in the war is just proof that antisemitism is still
alive.

Peace, then, is not on the ballot, and the stark division between what
once characterized “right” and “left” in the country no longer
exists. Even talking about the aspiration for “peace” is viewed as
a sign of naïveté. Last month, for example, the popular singers Mosh
Ben-Ari and Avraham Tal told the newspaper website Ynet of their
deliberations over whether they should include Ben-Ari’s popular
song “Salaam,” from 1997, which promises that “Peace will come
to us, and to the entire world,” in an upcoming concert tour. They
knew that there would be soldiers present at the concert, explained
Ben-Ari: “They’re coming from the battlefield, and I’m going to
sing to them about peace?” His partner elaborated: “The word
doesn’t have any legitimacy right now. It’s sad, but that’s the
reality.”

Yair Golan, the chairman of the Democrats party, which was formed
after the last election out of the remains of the Labor and Meretz
parties, is a former deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense
Forces. On October 7th, at age 61, the retired general did not
hesitate to collect a rifle from the army and drive to the Negev,
where he helped to rescue survivors who were in hiding from the
terrorists who attacked the Nova music festival they were attending.
He is now viewed by many Israelis as a radical leftist because he
still believes in two states, and even worse, as a traitor, because,
though he supported the war, he also was critical of Israel when it
committed war crimes. He still has not been forgiven for his remark,
for example, in a radio interview last summer, that “a sane country
… does not kill babies as a hobby.” (An estimated 3,150
Palestinians under the age of three are believed to have died in the
war.)

Golan, therefore, is not seen as a candidate for prime minister, and
his Democrats party will have exceeded expectations if it gains more
than a dozen Knesset seats (out of 120) in the election. But, like all
the other opposition party heads, he agrees that the foremost goal is
to oust the current government, and he expects the Democrats to be
part of any coalition that is formed. He is also the only head of a
“Zionist” (a euphemism for “non-Arab”) party who has said
openly that he would welcome the participation of an Arab party in the
next government.

Among the other opposition party heads, it is still early to point to
a single candidate as the undisputed leader of the camp. When Naftali
Bennett and Yair Lapid announced in late April that they were merging
forces into a single party, Beyachad (Together), with Bennett at the
helm, they must have figured that Gadi Eisenkot, a former general but
near-novice politician, would soon sign on with them as well. But
Eisenkot was in no hurry to relinquish the top spot to Bennett, and
over the past two months, the stock of his Yashar (“straight,”
“honest”) party has risen, while Bennett and Lapid’s Beyachad
has been in a slow decline.

Polling released on July 8 showed Eisenkot’s Yashar party scraping
past Likud for the first time—23 seats for Yashar against 22 for
Likud, with Bennett’s Beyachad in third place with 15. More
significantly, the Channel 13 poll also revealed that, were the
election held today, the Netanyahu camp would garner 51 seats and the
opposition 58, with 11 seats predicted for “the Arabs.” (A
majority requires 61 seats in the Knesset.)

Now that he is the front-runner, Eisenkot can expect to face more
scrutiny from the press. But with a refreshing anti-charisma
enveloping him, Eisenkot is someone it’s hard to dislike. A former
IDF chief of staff, he comports himself with quiet dignity, especially
evident after the death of his son, Gal Meir Eisenkot, in the early
months of the Gaza war. (Two of his nephews were also killed in the
war.) At the time, the father was serving as minister without
portfolio in the unity government that formed shortly after October
7th. In June 2024, what was at the time his party, led by Benny Gantz,
withdrew from Netanyahu’s cabinet, and a year after that, Eisenkot
resigned from the Knesset and also from Gantz’s party, saying that
it was undemocratic. He formed Yashar last September, and launched its
election campaign on June 30.

Lapid is the Knesset’s outgoing opposition leader, but when he
recognized that he lacked the popularity to lead the opposition to
victory in an election that promises to be fateful for Israel, he
yielded the top of the list to Bennett when the two hooked up this
past April.

In the 2021 election, Lapid and Bennett, at the last minute possible,
cobbled together a coalition with the help of Mansour Abbas, the head
of the Islamist United Arab List, the first time an Arab party became
a full partner in a government coalition. The three worked in relative
harmony, together restoring a modicum of calm to the political scene
after a dozen years of Netanyahu’s leadership, even as the latter
devoted all of his considerable powers to undermining the
“government of change,” so that, by June of 2022, Bennett had lost
his majority in the Knesset and resigned. Lapid replaced him during
the months leading up to the election, and he too was judicious in
governing.

Five years later, Mansour Abbas is again determined to be part of the
next government, and he has said and done all the necessary things to
demonstrate his loyalty to the Jewish state, short of having a bar
mitzvah. (Of course, Netanyahu calls him a terrorist.) But Bennett and
Lapid have ruled him out in advance as a coalition partner, even
though without the support of at least one or more of the Arab
parties, it’s not at all clear how they would be able to cobble
together a majority.

The fact that both Lapid and Bennett now say the government they hope
to form will include only “Zionist” parties, though neither has a
bad word to say about Abbas, suggests that they are not willing to
defy the anti-Arab sentiment that has infected Israeli society since
October 7th. Much of that sentiment has been whipped up by Netanyahu
and his ministers, in particular the extremist, racist Bezalel
Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. Eisenkot, for his part, has recently
come around to hinting that he could work with Abbas.

Recent polling shows that Jewish voters don’t want to see an Arab
party in the government, but basic arithmetic suggests that no
opposition leader will be able to form a stable government without
Arab participation or support. Eisenkot seems to have understood that,
belatedly, and he probably could bring the public with him if he
prepares the ground properly. That is why Netanyahu is taking every
opportunity to warn the public about the grave danger inherent in
supporting Eisenkot.

Polling also shows that most Israelis are ready for a change in the
political atmosphere and truly do value the democracy that may not
survive another round of Bibi as prime minister. What isn’t clear is
whether they are capable of seeing that living in a democracy means
accepting that all citizens, even those who are part of a minority,
are deserving of equal rights and opportunities, and that Israel’s
Arabs have long since proved their loyalty to the state and its laws.
This isn’t just a question relating to who can form the next
government. It is essential to determining whether Israel has a chance
to survive as a liberal democracy.

_DAVID B. GREEN is a writer and editor living in Jerusalem. His
writing can be found at [link removed]

_Read the original article at __PROSPECT.ORG._
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_Used with the permission. © __The American Prospect_
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* elections
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* legislation
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* Israel
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* Antisemitism
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* peace
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* democracy
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