Israel’s Electoral Landscape: Divisions on the Right and the International Factor
Policy Assessment by Amee r Makhoul, Progress Center for Policies
Candidate lists for Israel’s Knesset elections were submitted to the Central Elections Committee on 7 and 8 September. This is a mandatory procedural step, after which the Committee reviews the lists for compliance with electoral procedures and the law before formally approving them by 27 September. The process then allows for petitions seeking to disqualify lists or individual candidates. Such efforts are expected to target the two Arab lists, or candidates running on them, particularly given that the governing coalition holds a majority on the Committee. Any disqualification decisions, however, may be challenged by those affected before the Israeli Supreme Court, whose independence has itself been significantly eroded in recent years.
Reading the Electoral Landscape
A total of 38 lists were submitted to the Central Elections Committee, encompassing most of the parties and lists currently represented in the Knesset as well as new parties belonging to the far-right camp. The Zionist opposition is contesting the election through three blocs that have taken shape over the past two years. Most prominent among them is Yashar, led by Gadi Eisenkot, which current polling places as the largest party. Eisenkot also leads Netanyahu by a substantial margin when voters are asked who is best suited to serve as prime minister, by 47 per cent to 34 per cent.
The far-right bloc remains firmly consolidated around Benjamin Netanyahu, whose leadership within that camp is uncontested. The opposition parties, by contrast, have yet to formally agree on who would lead an alternative government should they win the election.
The debate—or struggle—centres on whether the premiership should go to the leader of the largest party or to the figure best positioned to assemble a governing coalition. There is also disagreement over the ultimate objective: whether to establish a national unity government that would include Likud without Netanyahu in the event of his defeat, or to form an alternative government offering a substantive departure from the current government on fundamental policy questions.
Netanyahu’s Waning Magic
There is something distinctive about the alignment of forces in this election. The far-right bloc appears to be moving towards still greater radicalisation, yet it is also more fragile than Netanyahu would have wished.
Likud’s primaries deepened internal divisions within the governing party to the point that MK Tally Gotliv broke away and joined Ben-Gvir’s list. Ben-Gvir, for his part, is seeking to challenge the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas party for parts of its electoral base.
Meanwhile, Bezalel Smotrich’s alliance with Moshe Feiglin pushes Religious Zionism still further towards an extreme Kahanist and messianic discourse concerning the Palestinian presence in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and inside Israel. At the same time, the Amcha Yisrael party, led by General Ofer Winter, who is ideologically rooted in the Religious Zionist movement, poses a challenge that could severely weaken Smotrich’s party despite belonging politically to Netanyahu’s broader camp. Its central message is that anyone associated with the failures of 7 October 2023 should step aside—an argument directed, by implication, at the current government itself.
Despite the appearance of conflict with Netanyahu, the latter may see a dual function for Winter’s party. First, if it crosses the electoral threshold, it could provide an additional guarantee of Netanyahu’s ability to remain in power. Second, it could weaken the opposition—and Eisenkot in particular—by attracting voters angered by Netanyahu’s policies who might otherwise have switched to the opposition.
Winter’s party appears capable of appealing to precisely this constituency, potentially keeping its votes within the broader right-wing camp. From Netanyahu’s perspective, this may have value even if those votes are ultimately wasted because the new party fails to cross the electoral threshold. Netanyahu succeeded in the 2022 election in engineering alliances across the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox blocs—a political ability that the Israeli media routinely described as his “magic”. So far, however, he appears unable to reproduce the same feat.
Netanyahu’s Greatest Vulnerability
Netanyahu’s clearest weakness lies in the erosion of public confidence in his leadership.
Within Likud, he fought to expand his control over the electoral slate by securing the authority to reserve roughly ten high-ranking positions for candidates of his choosing. The objective was to present Likud as a party capable of appealing to the centre-right rather than exclusively to the far right, which has increasingly come to dominate the party’s identity after Netanyahu spent much of the past two decades systematically marginalising figures associated with Likud’s historically liberal wing.
Yet the final composition of the Likud list underscored Netanyahu’s failure to achieve this objective. A number of prominent figures from the security, political and economic establishments whom he had hoped to recruit declined to join him. Contrary to his intentions, the resulting list is more right-wing, with the influence of the Religious Zionist current becoming still more pronounced.
An Open Contest
Netanyahu’s apparent difficulties do not mean that the election has been decided. Any such assumption would be illusory. There are indications that he could lose, but the campaign is likely to intensify considerably before 27 October. It may become exceptionally aggressive, potentially involving the manipulative use of artificial intelligence and deliberate attempts to generate political disorder that could create the conditions for challenging the result should Netanyahu lose by a narrow margin—perhaps only tens of thousands of votes.
The possibility of postponing the election under the pretext of a deliberately engineered security escalation also remains on the table. The strength and political direction of the ultra-Orthodox parties will likewise be decisive. If their historic partnership with Likud fractures, or if sections of the Haredi electorate shift towards Eisenkot, the balance could change significantly. Eisenkot’s candidate list appears deliberately designed to appeal to a broad cross-section of Israeli society in a concerted bid for power.
The Arab Parties
The Arab-Jewish anti-occupation and anti-racist party A Place for All of Us withdrew from the electoral contest after assessments suggested that it could win tens of thousands of votes but would fail to cross the electoral threshold, thereby effectively wasting them. The Joint List and the United Arab List, meanwhile, have both submitted their candidate lists to the Central Elections Committee.
Should efforts by the right—and perhaps by sections of the opposition—to disqualify either list or individual candidates fail, the two Arab lists could secure approximately fourteen seats between them. Under such circumstances, the Arab vote could determine the outcome of the election. More importantly, it could acquire the power to determine which government it does not want. It might also be able to influence which alternative government would be less damaging and easier to confront, even without possessing the ability to determine that government’s policies.
Palestine Returns to the Centre of the Election
Three political developments have converged to impose an electoral agenda that neither Netanyahu nor the opposition leadership can afford to ignore. The first was the US ambassador’s visit to the West Bank town of Turmus Ayya, during which he placed responsibility on the Israeli government for protecting Palestinians. He rejected attempts to portray attacks by settler militias merely as the actions of rogue groups, instead holding the government responsible for bringing them to an end.
The second was official US pressure translated into orders to the Israeli army to evacuate 15 newly established settlement outposts, among hundreds already in existence. The move threatens to sharpen tensions between Netanyahu and his Religious Zionist coalition partners.
The third was Britain’s decision, joined by eleven other European and Western states—including France, Spain and Canada—to prohibit dealings with the settlement enterprise and its products, while characterising Israel’s conduct as ethnic cleansing and accusing it of seeking to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state within the framework of a two-state solution. Israeli anxiety has been heightened by the absence of any US objection to these measures. Indeed, there is a growing perception that the European and American positions are increasingly aligned.
A further blow—unexpected for Netanyahu both personally and politically—came with reports that the United Arab Emirates had directly warned him about Hamas’s plans before 7 October 2023, but that he failed to inform either the military or the National Security Council. The revelations have revived demands for an official commission of inquiry and undermine Netanyahu’s narrative that places responsibility for the greatest failure in Israel’s history primarily on the military and Shin Bet. This issue alone could prove decisive in determining the election result.
Unlike the Lebanon and Iran files, the return of Palestine to the centre of the electoral agenda is unlikely to work in Netanyahu’s favour. Yet it may not necessarily benefit the opposition either if its criticism remains confined to Netanyahu’s failures without offering a political alternative—even one limited to articulating the possibility of a political settlement. In such a scenario, the opposition could inadvertently shield Netanyahu from the political consequences of the Palestinian question.
Britain’s move, together with those of other Western governments, could in practice make occupation and settlement expansion more politically and morally costly for Israel, both as a state and as a society. Its impact will nevertheless remain limited unless it develops into a broader reconsideration of existing partnership agreements.
Israeli media have dwelt extensively on the anxiety gripping Netanyahu’s government, describing the international response as a “snowball” or “domino effect”. Channel 12 went so far as to characterise it as a “diplomatic 7 October”, reflecting the extent to which the state, the Foreign Ministry and Mossad had failed to anticipate these measures.
Israel’s foreign minister, meanwhile, characterised the moves as interference in the Knesset election. He presented them as running directly counter to his government’s attempt to force a confrontation with Palestinians in the West Bank within a broader agenda of displacement, warning that the European and Western measures could prompt Israel to retaliate against the Palestinian people.
Assessment
Israel’s electoral contest is entering its decisive phase, but the outcome remains open. Any assumption that the result has already been determined would be misplaced. Unlike in the previous electoral cycle, the opposition currently appears more cohesive than the Likud-led far-right bloc. This could prove significant among broad sections of the electorate, particularly voters disillusioned with Netanyahu but not yet committed to the opposition.
The combined weight of the two Arab lists could become the decisive factor in preventing Netanyahu and his coalition from remaining in power. Their importance may lie less in determining the policies of a future government than in denying Netanyahu the parliamentary arithmetic required to form one.
The latest international positions on the West Bank—particularly those of the United States and European governments—could shift the electoral contest against the far right. Their significance lies not only in the measures themselves but in the perception that Israel’s international room for manoeuvre is narrowing.
Palestine is returning to the centre of Israel’s electoral politics. This is not the result of an opposition strategy; rather, external developments and the policies of the far right have forced the issue back onto the electoral agenda, potentially to the detriment of Netanyahu’s bloc.
Palestinian steadfastness and the consolidation of Palestinian presence, particularly in the West Bank, could undermine both the far right’s political project and Netanyahu’s strategy for retaining power. The ability to resist displacement therefore carries consequences extending beyond the immediate struggle on the ground and into the internal balance of Israeli politics.
