Gazans are watching the final days of Israel's election campaign with a mixture of anger, exhaustion and deep scepticism, hoping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lose power but doubting a new leader would bring meaningful change.
Defeat for Mr Netanyahu would offer a measure of emotional relief after years of bombing and destruction ordered by the Israeli Prime Minister. Yet the prospect of a new government elicits little optimism among Palestinians who have lost their homes, families and jobs and believe Gaza's plight extends far deeper.
Their concerns are more immediate: finding permanent shelter, securing food and water, restoring schools and hospitals, and rebuilding the economy, the collapse of which has left civilians dependent on humanitarian aid.
“It makes no difference to us in Gaza who wins or loses the Israeli elections,” said Munir Isleem, 35, whose home in Gaza city's Shujaiya neighbourhood was destroyed in the war.
“What matters to us is escaping this life of tents and humiliation, and putting an end to the hunger and poverty that the war has forced upon us,” he told The National.
Mr Isleem, who has spent the past two years moving between displacement camps with his family, still hopes Mr Netanyahu will lose. “The war Netanyahu launched against us didn’t just take away our homes. It robbed us of our happiness, our dearest friends and the people closest to us,” he said.
Before the war, Mr Isleem worked as a skilled machine operator at a plastic factory, earning about $1,000 a month – enough to provide for his family. Now, unemployed and displaced, he relies on aid to survive.
The war “transformed us from productive people who worked and earned a living into unemployed people waiting for food from charity kitchens, humanitarian aid and our turn in the water queues”, he said.
Political reality
Mr Netanyahu faces a tough fight for re-election, with an array of challengers led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, and amid division within his governing coalition. While his handling of wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, and the October 7 Hamas attacks in 2023, has been criticised by rivals, few of them support Palestinian statehood or favour a radically different approach in military matters.
Palestinian political analyst Mustafa Ibrahim said the election should not be seen as a referendum on Palestinian rights or Gaza’s future. “I don’t believe the situation will change significantly whether Netanyahu wins or loses, because Israeli policy towards Gaza has reminded largely consistent under successive governments throughout history,” he said.
He added that the positions taken by Mr Netanyahu and Mr Eisenkot amounted to different ways of achieving Israeli security objectives, rather than any fundamental difference in policy towards Palestinians. “Ultimately the political approach and objectives remain the same, regardless of the individuals of governments in power,” he said.
Like Mr Isleem, he said Palestinians in Gaza still want Mr Netanyahu to lose because they hold him primarily responsible for what they see as the genocide against them. However, this does not necessarily translate into support for other candidates.
Years of disappointment
For Ahmed Sammour, 61, a former Arabic teacher from Gaza city’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, scepticism about Israeli elections has been shaped by decades of experience.
Mr Sammour has lived under more than 10 Israeli governments and remembers periods of conflict and negotiations. But none of them offered lasting security or freedom to Gaza. “All of them have followed the same approach towards us as Palestinians,” he said.
He recalled the Oslo Accords, signed by Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s, as a moment when negotiations appeared to offer a different path. But Mr Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli extremist opposed to the peace process, and the optimism of that period failed to last.
Today, Mr Sammour lives with his family in a camp near his destroyed home. He holds Mr Netanyahu responsible for the devastation.
Even if someone with better polices towards Gaza wins and begins rebuilding the territory, it will still take years
Amal Al Hinnawi
“The collapse of Netanyahu’s government and his defeat in the elections would certainly not represent a new beginning or a source of hope for us,” he said. “But at least we would be rid of a leader whom we hold responsible for killing children and innocent civilians.”
Mr Sammour said Mr Netanyahu's government had inflicted destruction on a scale unlike anything he witnessed under previous Israeli administrations. Even so, he is reluctant to place his hopes in a successor.
“Whoever comes after him will not necessary be any better,” he said.
Amal Al Hinnawi, 25, a teacher at a tent school in northern Gaza, believes the scale of the destruction has made the results of Israel’s election secondary to the enormous task of rebuilding.
Ms Al Hinnawi sees the consequences of the war for the education system, where makeshift classrooms have replaced conventional school buildings and children struggle to continue learning amid displacement and instability.
“Israeli elections no longer matter much to us in Gaza because it will take decades for our lives to return to what they were before the war,” she said.
“Even if someone with better polices towards Gaza wins and begins rebuilding the territory, it will still take years because the scale of destruction across every sector is beyond description.”