Israelis on both the left and the right appear convinced that Tuesday’s election could be among their most consequential. The rest of the world seems singularly unimpressed, because the issues separating Israel from Arab countries like Saudi Arabia — with which Israel seeks normalization — or from westerners, including many younger Americans, were simply not contested.
Almost 78% of Israelis voted, the highest since 1999. The 5 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have never been able to vote or otherwise access the system that controls every aspect of their lives.
However, turnout was especially high among the 2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have been increasingly taking part in the Israeli system. Like many Jewish Israelis, they are hoping to finally dispatch Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for a record 19 years. Netanyahu on Wednesday said without evidence, “The elections in the State of Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of prohibited software to mobilize voters,” and he demanded an investigation by multiple agencies.
Given that the occupation and settlement program in the West Bank — as well as Israel’s exceptionally cruel policies in Gaza — will almost certainly remain largely unchanged, the rest of the world can be forgiven for shrugging.
The prime minister’s domestic critics blame him for Israel’s catastrophic intelligence and emergency response failure when Hamas gunmen from Gaza attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing roughly 1,200 people and abducting 251 others. They want an independent inquiry into those failures, while Netanyahu and his supporters blame military and intelligence officials.
Israel’s devastating war in Gaza — the “mighty vengeance” Netanyahu vowed on Oct. 7 — has alienated much of the world. Over 75,000 people — almost all Palestinians and at least half of them civilians — have been killed. Virtually the entire population of Gaza has been displaced. As a result, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for alleged war crimes, though his Israeli critics have ignored that. Responsibility for state failures on Oct. 7 remains controversial — but the utter devastation of Gaza really isn’t. While much of the rest of the world appears profoundly horrified and alienated by the rampage, most Israelis don’t seem to care.
Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot lost a son who was fighting in Gaza, but he’s hardly promising a notably different approach. That’s also essentially true in the occupied West Bank, although Eisenkot does promise to rein in violent Jewish settlers increasingly terrorizing Palestinians.
Yet when it comes to Israel’s relentless drift toward the eventual annexation of the West Bank, without providing Palestinians in the occupied territories citizenship or voting rights, he hasn’t outlined a significantly different vision from Netanyahu. Both categorically reject Palestinian statehood, which is the only viable formula for peaceful coexistence. Yet Israel’s settlement project, and the complex apparatus of systematic ethnic repression in the West Bank it requires, isn’t especially controversial and certainly wasn’t a campaign issue.
It’s understandable that many Israelis view this election as a decisive test of their national character. Numerous crucial questions regarding the nature of their society seem at stake. Will the rule of law prevail with a continued independent judiciary, which Netanyahu has tried to dismantle? Will ultraorthodox men continue to enjoy state benefits while avoiding military service? Is Israel’s economy fundamentally healthy, or threatened by looming international sanctions because of the occupation? And, most of all, is the “Jewish character” of Israel simply a matter of broad ethnic solidarity or a narrower religious imperative that supersedes democratic traditions among Jewish Israelis?
These are certainly momentous questions, and the closely fought election is only the latest indication of how deeply divided Jewish Israelis have become as their society has shifted toward the religious and nationalist far-right.
But no matter the answers, given that the occupation and settlement program in the West Bank — as well as Israel’s exceptionally cruel policies in Gaza — will almost certainly remain largely unchanged, the rest of the world can be forgiven for shrugging.
This is just another Israeli election in which the occupation and issues regarding millions of Palestinians chafing under their highly oppressive and deadly rule haven’t arisen as significant controversies for Israeli society.
Since Oct. 7, under Netanyahu, Israel has been surrounding itself — not just in Gaza, but also Syria and Lebanon — with “buffer zones” that have been violently depopulated and, in many cases, rendered uninhabitable. Combined with the war against Iran, largely fought by the United States but loudly instigated by Netanyahu, Israelis appear to be building themselves a future of conflict, confrontation and warfare into the foreseeable future. Since 2025, Netanyahu has even been asking Israelis to regard themselves as a “super Sparta.”
Eisenkot may avoid such language, but he hasn’t sketched out policies that would allow Israel to avoid that fate. If Israel doesn’t quickly change course, it may well end up there with or without Netanyahu.
The rest of the Middle East and broader world, including many younger Americans, are already developing a distinct and reasonably dim view of the emerging Jewish “super Sparta.” Yet this vision wasn’t really on the ballot on Tuesday. It’s becoming hard to avoid concluding that this path is now a Jewish Israeli consensus.
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