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Israelis will go to the polls on October 27 in the first general election since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. The election will determine not only the fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but also the country’s direction amid deep internal divisions, regional security challenges and international isolation. Mr. Netanyahu’s central campaign promise is that only his government can guarantee Israel’s security. His opponents, led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief, question his failure to prevent the October 7 attack. Mr. Eisenkot has also pledged to end the “forever wars” and repair Israel’s relations with global powers.
Who is Gadi Eisenkot, the man who challenges King Bibi? Read this profile.
Israel is known for its fractious politics. The Knesset, the country’s 120-member parliament, has never seen a single party win an outright majority of 61 seats, making coalition-building a defining feature of Israeli politics. The country holds elections every four years, provided a parliament completes its term. Mr. Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud, which won 32 seats in the 2022 parliamentary elections, has arguably been the dominant political party for years. Mr. Netanyahu, the country’s longest serving Prime Minister, has also maintained a tight grip over the party. In the 2022 elections, the Likud-led right-religious coalition, including Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit, Shas and United Torah Judaism won a majority and Mr. Netanyahu formed the government.
The last four years were extremely consequential for Israel. After the Hamas attack, Israel launched a disastrous war in Gaza. It is today facing allegations of committing genocide against Palestinians.Israel also widened the war in Gaza into a regional conflict, targeting Iran’s allies before striking Tehran itself, first in June 2025 and again in February 2026. Despite the succession of wars, many of Israel’s security challenges remain unresolved. Hamas remains in the parts of Gaza where Palestinians have been pushed to. Hezbollah was forced to retreat from southern Lebanon, but the Shia group remains a powerful socio-political militant outfit in Lebanon. In Syria, the government of Bashar al-Assad, an Iranian ally, collapsed. But the man who replaced Mr. Assad was Ahmad al Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda commander who is today a close ally of Turkey, another regional Israeli rival. The war against Iran has reached nowhere, with the Islamic Republic not only surviving the initial strikes but also retaliating with attacks on Israel and U.S. bases across the Persian Gulf.
To understand the security challenges Israel is facing despite its back-to-back wars, watch this episode of Global Faultlines: Is Israel winning?
Inside Israel-Palestine, settler politicians, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit) and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism) have supported new settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has escalated in recent years.
It was against this background Mr. Eisenkot built his campaign on a strong anti-Netanyahu platform. His Yashar party has made significant progress over the past year. According to most opinion polls, Likud’s tally is expected to fall from last election’s 32 while Yashar could emerge as the single largest party. In Israel, which doesn’t have a Constitution, the President usually invites the leader of the largest party to form the government. That leader typically gets 28 days to hold talks with other parties and stitch together a coalition with the support of at least 61 Members of the Knesset (MKs).
This year, although Mr. Eisenkot’s party is expected to win most seats, forming a coalition is not going to be easy for him. Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, despite political differences, is ideologically more coherent than the centrist coalition Mr. Eisenkot wants to build. The United Torah Judaism, which left the coalition government last year, could support Mr. Netanyahu after the elections. But it’s unclear whether the Likud coalition, even with the support of the UTJ, would pass the 61-seat threshold.
On the other side, the opposition is filled with heavyweights. Besides Mr. Eisdenkot’s Yashar, the Democrats, led by former deputy military chief Yair Golan; the Yisrael Beiteinu of former Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the Together alliance, led by former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, are the key players in the opposition. Mr. Eisdenkot’s challenge is to bring all of them together–some of them such as Mr. Bennett and Mr. Lieberman, nourish their own prime ministerial ambitions.
Opinion polls suggest that even if all these parties come together, they would still fall short of a majority. Mr. Eisdenkot may have to take the support – either direct or outside support – of the Arab Raam party. As of now, he has maintained that he would not join hands with the Arab parties. If he takes direct support from Raam after the elections, it would provide a political weapon to Mr. Netanyahu even before the government is formed. If Mr. Eisenkot or any of his allies forms a minority government with the outside support of Arabs, it would be a weak government.
In many ways, this is going to be one of the most consequential elections in Israel’s history. Mr. Netanyahu’s appeal is waning, but he is not out yet. The opposition wants to build a political alternative, but they face structural challenges in a polity that has clearly shifted rightward. Meanwhile, all mainstream politicians, from Mr. Netanyahu to Mr. Eisenkot and Mr. Bennett, agree that a Palestine state should not be formed under any condition.
Videos
In the latest episode of Global Faultlines, I answer audience questions, mostly on West Asia. The crisis in the region seems to be deepening with rapid escalation of the war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis and the growing possibility of a new round of Israeli-U.S. strikes on Iran. It’s bad news for the global energy markets. Bad news for the global economy. And bad news for India.
Poll question
