Many observers are pinning their hopes on the next Israeli election of next October, for a radical change of course. For the last thirty years, Israel has been led almost continuously by successive Netanyahu governments, establishing “King Bibi,” as he is often called by supporters and critics alike, as Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister. Yet “Mr. Security,” another popular nickname for Netanyahu, failed miserably on October 7, 2023. He had long resisted setting up a state commission of inquiry to investigate the government’s strategic and management errors. Meanwhile, all other public institutions – mainly, the IDF and the Shin Bet – have purged those responsible for the worst Jewish massacre since the Holocaust. Elections could also take place earlier in September if the ultra-Orthodox parties, particularly the United Torah Judaism, advance a bill this week to dissolve the Knesset due to the failure to pass the Haredi military draft exemption law within the current legislature.
The current Netanyahu government is considered the most extreme right-wing in Israeli history. It relies on the support of a motley crew made up of the Settler movement, Religious Zionists, and Ben Gvir’s Kahanist supporters and Ultra-Orthodox parties. Despite a significant electoral backlash and shakeup (60% of Israelis wanting him to resign as PM in March 2025), it managed to stay in power after the shock of the Hamas terrorist attack, avoiding snap elections. In opinion polls, the Premier’s party, the Likud, is still projected to gain 24 seats, thus holding its position as the second-largest party. This data alone suggests that October 7 was not the breakthrough moment in Israeli politics that many had expected. This is also confirmed by the fact that the same actors running in the previous elections will be competing in the next round in the Fall. Furthermore, the largest popular demonstrations for the return of refugees held in Gaza – 251 Israelis were abducted on October 7, 2023, by Hamas, but initially the Prime Minister did not list the return of the hostages among the goals of the “Iron Swords” Operation – and against the war in Gaza have not significantly shifted public opinion or paved the way to the opening of new directions in Israeli politics.
Once again, the next elections are poised to be a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu, the incumbent Prime Minister, still struggling with his own trial on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. The major rift between the pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps takes on an ideological form: a choice between an Israel that would descend into chaos and international ostracism because of settlers’ violence and religious extremism, and an Israel that would recover from bitter internal cleavages and move towards democratic renewal by distancing itself from the extreme right-wing bloc currently leading it.
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It is difficult to draw an analogy between the left-right agendas of European political parties and those of Israel. Although approximately two million Israelis are poor, according to the 2025 Israel Central Bureau’s statistics, this issue is not central to political debates because the country is performing well economically, with a growth rate of 2%, superior to that of most EU members, despite two and a half years of continuous warfare.
Indeed, the dominant issues in Israeli political discourse are completely alien to European politics. All Jewish parties compete to demonstrate their Zionist credentials, which refers to their strong belief in Jewish sovereignty, military independence, and Israel as a democratic Jewish state based on the 2018 Nation-State Law, none of which suggests repealing it. Despite the bloody and unresolved nature of the Gaza war, a moral reckoning is not on the agenda, as much as there is no debate about the newly introduced Palestinian-only death penalty, which does not stir any emotion. Instead, all opposition parties focus on healing and uniting Israeli society after the 2023 trauma and the preexisting divisions over the judicial reform.
The main cleavages among the two pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs revolve around the defense of democratic institutions, the military draft of the ultra-Orthodox Jews (conducted under the popular heading of the need for “sharing the burden”) and Israeli-Arab regional dynamics, including the relaunch of the 2020 Abraham Accords – strongly endorsed by president Trump with the promise of an Israeli-Saudi diplomatic opening that still has to materialize. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its potential solutions are erased from the domestic debates and branded as unsolvable problems, yet a majority of the Jewish public expresses a strong will to part ways with the Arab minority with Israeli citizenship (over 20% of the population), increasingly holding that it poses a threat to the country’s security – from 41% in 2018 to 53% in 2024, according to the Israeli Democracy Index, 2024.
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The extent of Jewish colonization in Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank territories) and the prospect of “settling” new territories, such as those carved out in the Gaza Strip or in Lebanon south of the Litani river, are debated, though not taking center stage. A sizeable majority of Jews (62%), though, hold that there are security advantages to having civilian settlements close to the country’s borders (The Israeli Democracy Index 2024). To be fair, Jewish settlers’ extremism is also highly debated, but only when it takes the form of the Hilltop Youth setting arsons and killing Palestinians on a violent spree in remote outposts or rebelling against the IDF, not when settlers advocate the return of Jews to the Gaza Strip as part of the Land of Israel according to the 1947 UN Partition Plan (Statement made by Minister of Settlements Orit Strock of the Religious Zionist Party on February 4, 2026). Finally, all Zionist parties – that is, all but the Arab parties – are united in their resolve regarding the war in Iran and their determination to continue military operations until a lasting outcome is achieved (namely, the destruction of the country’s nuclear and ballistic programs, which they evidently consider a realistic goal), without yielding to international pressure on an issue they consider existential to the country’s survival.
The convergence of virtually all political forces toward a general consensus was in full display in the officially kicked off event of the 2026 electoral campaign: the announcement of the merger between Naftali Bennett, a popular right-wing politician and former prime minister of the short-lived Government of Change (2021–2022), and Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid (“There is Future”) party, forming a new party called Beyachad (“Together”). Bennett, a former head of the Yesha Council (the settler government in the West Bank) and a religious Zionist, and Lapid, a secular Jew striving to represent a liberal constituency, should not have had anything in common politically, yet their parties have merged three times in recent political history (in 2012, 2021, and 2026).
Bennet portrays himself as an Israeli Péter Magyar who will bring about democratic renewal and a return to the rule of law by rejecting judicial reform. However, he lacks a party of his own and the funding necessary to run an electoral campaign. Thus, he is relying on the infrastructure of Yesh Atid, a well-established party with a strong constituency. Its leader, Yair Lapid, is not expected to be competitive in the polls for the Premiership, but remains interested in unseating the Netanyahu government, a goal that could only be achieved by forming a large coalition of parties winning them the majority of 61 seats in the Knesset. Therefore, the two “opposition” leaders aim to merge with a third party: Yeshar (“Straight”), led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF Chief of Staff.
The real race is to win over the swing votes on the right of the Likud, which represent the vast majority of the electorate. Ideologically, the race for whatever alternative political majority obscures the widespread, cross-party support for Greater Israel, the acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the settler movement, and the erasure of the Green Line (the State’s de facto border between 1949 and 1967) from Israeli politics and minds.
Several new voices from social movements of the past two years are entering politics and joining the opposition, including the Tikvah Forum and the Hostage and Missing Families Forum. They bring their common will to establish a Commission of Inquiry on October 7 and hold Netanyahu accountable for his failures. However, their political agenda does not extend much beyond this single policy issue, so they are likely to join existing parties, without making much of a difference to the overall balance of power. Finally, there is some movement within the Likud. A fringe wing of the party, made up of senior leaders – Yuli Edelstein, Moshe Khalon and others, seems tempted to split off and establish a “Likud B”: a more moderate version appealing to traditional right-wing voters. This new wing opposes the renewal of a coalition with extremist factions like Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Pride”) and signals its eventual opening to opposition parties to build a new, alternative majority.
The key question looking forward toward next October remains that the government coalition and the opposition are neck-and-neck, and neither is projected to secure a clear victory. In fact, the latter is falling short of one seat in all polls (60 seats). Most Zionist parties reject the participation of Arab parties in any future coalition, branding them as a domestic fifth column and considering them no more trustworthy than Hamas, in line with the position of the coalition parties (Likud, the Religious Zionists and Otzma Yehudit).
It is too early to tell whether future party mergers and splits will tip the balance in favor of the opposition, but the outlook is unlikely to change radically. The opposition certainly wants to rein in the current coalition’s contempt for the institutions of the rule of law – from the courts to the civil service, the IDF, and the media – and redress Israel’s standing in the Arab Gulf, but this falls short of addressing the multiple failures of the Israeli democracy.