Deeply divided Israel braces for pivotal election

Deeply split Israel prepares for a crucial election

Three years of regional war have led to a showdown Israel long expected.

Tuesday’s general election looms over a nation that is sharply divided and braced for confrontation.

Polls released on Friday showed the governing coalition and the main opposition bloc running almost level, with half a million people voting for the first time and about 70,000 Israelis reportedly flying in from overseas specifically to take part.

On Saturday night, huge numbers of opposition supporters filled central Tel Aviv to call for a change in government.

"We're optimistic," 21-year-old Omri told me. "I want peace, I want security, and I want to end corruption and get the religious fanatics out."

This campaign has been driven by new methods - including AI videos made to attract attention - and by a fresh political figure.

Gadi Eisenkot is perhaps not the sort of person you would expect to challenge the flashy, combative, media-savvy style of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Still relatively new to politics, and from a working-class Moroccan background, Eisenkot is a former military chief of staff known for his calm temperament and low-key style. Some have called him a "non-politician".

Yet he and his centrist Yashar party have repeatedly edged out Netanyahu and Likud in recent polls, the latest of which was published on Friday, in keeping with Israeli election law.

Israeli politics is about building coalitions rather than one party winning outright, but with the outcome too close to predict, Eisenkot’s growing prominence has intensified a contest many Israelis already view as existential for their country’s future.

Last week, I saw him move past the cameras at a community centre for Ethiopian Jews in Ramle, accompanied by a cluster of security staff and advisers.

Among those there to hear him was David, a neatly dressed man in a freshly ironed shirt and navy jacket, who said he had met Eisenkot before.

"He looks you in the eye, not like a leader looking down at someone," David told me. "And he listens. He's very sympathetic."

Eisenkot’s appeal is often attributed to his personality and background. A softly spoken military man whose son was killed during the Gaza War, he has portrayed himself as coming "from the periphery", rather than from Israel’s wealthy urban elite.

His Moroccan roots made election headlines earlier this month after a pro-Netanyahu speaker used a racist slur about him in a TV debate, calling him a Moroccan "monkey".

"These elections are about many issues," Eisenkot told the crowd at the Ramle community centre. "They are about security, economy, education...but primarily, they are about the identity of the State of Israel, and what kind of Israel we want to see. A Jewish state, a democratic state, a liberal, tolerant, egalitarian state."

That message resonates with opposition supporters, who argue that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government threatens Israel’s democracy, citing his attempts to limit the judiciary’s powers and his refusal to set up a state commission of inquiry into the 7 October 2023 attacks, on the grounds that the Supreme Court would be biased against him.

Eisenkot, together with other opposition leaders, has tried to pull voters away from Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud by promising such an inquiry, which a recent survey says is backed by more than 70% of Jewish Israelis.

He has also promised to enforce court rulings on drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews into national military service - another step popular with both right-wing voters and the opposition.

Benjamin Netanyahu has responded with a campaign centered on Israel’s security and the slogan "No Surrender".

He has repeatedly portrayed his opponents as weak on security, appealing to the fears of some right-wing voters that Jewish opposition parties could join forces with Israel’s Arab parties to win a majority, and implying that this could endanger national security.

About one-fifth of Israel’s population is Arab - many of whom identify as Palestinian citizens of Israel.

These are the first elections since the 7 October attacks, when Hamas-led gunmen broke through Gaza’s border fence, killing almost people and taking 251 hostage.

It was Israel’s worst security failure, yet three years later its prime minister is once again seeking re-election as the only man who can protect Israel.

"If the army had woken him in time, it wouldn't have happened," Shlomi Bashar told me, one of several staunch Netanyahu supporters drinking in a basement café in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market. "He does bear a certain responsibility, but after the 7 October, he changed the entire Middle East."

Netanyahu has been driving home the argument that Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran in the years after the 7 October attacks have reduced the country’s existential dangers.

"We need him to be re-elected so that he can finish this work," said Shlomi. "In my opinion, he is one of the best leaders in the world. Most of the world loves him and respects him, because he is a strong man and his ideas are correct."

The prime minister has long depended on a solid right-wing voter base, but he is expected to lose some support in this election. Some voters may be drifting to opposition parties such as Eisenkot’s. Others, including some committed Likud supporters we spoke to, said the 7 October attacks had pushed them toward parties further to the right.

Lt Col (Res) Eyal Hajbi, who heads the regional civil defence unit in Netanyahu stronghold Sderot, right on the Gaza border, lost several friends and colleagues in the attacks. He lights candles for them every day in his office, and said he would be thinking of them when he votes on Tuesday.

Standing on a ridge overlooking the ruins of northern Gaza, he pointed toward the wasteland where Israel’s army has completely flattened the neighbourhoods of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.

"As far as I'm concerned, after 7 October, we should wipe them all out," he said. "I've changed my understanding of Gaza. Before, I wouldn't have said we should destroy it."

He said he and his family had always voted Likud, but now he would back the far-right party of Itamar Ben Gvir, Jewish Power.

"My family has become more extreme than it ever was before," he said. "If once we deliberated over it, today we don't think twice; we vote."

Polls indicate that fewer than 10% of Israelis are undecided, and very few of them are weighing a switch between government parties and opposition parties.

Ben Gvir, the National Security minister in Netanyahu’s coalition, has been targeting younger voters with attention-grabbing social media campaigns.

A poll for one of Israel’s leading newspapers, Yedioth Ahronoth, published on 9 October, suggested that more than 16% of first-time voters in Israel would back far-right parties such as his.

In Sderot, a group of 18-year-olds from a nearby Jewish religious college told me the 7 October attacks had shaped their politics far more than their parents’ views. All four teenagers planned to vote for another far-right party, Religious Zionism, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

"Today, the whole younger generation understands that peaceful paths will not work," Aviad Elmahach, one of the teenagers, told me. "Older adults, who are set in a fixed mindset, find [it] harder to change, but the youth understand that we need to be here with strength and an iron fist, which is the only way to win."

He said the lesson of 7 October was that Israel had to be as forceful as possible in its dealings with the Palestinians, more than 74,000 of whom have been killed by Israel in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

"The youth have a fresh new perspective that has not yet become entrenched in politics, and they understand very well why we're voting for Smotrich - it means holding the land with strength and giving [the Palestinians] nothing through peaceful gestures."

A little farther south along the Gaza border are the kibbutzim that were overrun by gunmen during the Hamas attacks. For decades, they were known as strongholds of the Israeli left.

One of them is Nir Oz, where 47 people were killed and 76 taken hostage that day.

Three years later, residents are returning. Twenty-six-year-old Gal Pauker has opened a Friday wine café at the edge of his small vineyard beside the Gaza border - a few wooden tables placed under beige canvas sheets to shield customers from the harsh desert sun. His grandfather Gideon was killed during the 7 October attacks.

I asked Gal and his mother Galia whether those attacks had changed their political views.

"We need a change - we can't live with this government anymore," Galia said. "And I'm not talking about security, I'm talking first about humanity."

Having previously voted for centrist parties, Galia says she will vote for Eisenkot this time because "he's an ordinary guy and I hope he'll continue the way he's talking".

Her son Gal said he was choosing between Eisenkot and the left-leaning Democrats party of Yair Golan, another former army general.

"I'm not naïve. I know there are a lot of more militant voices from young generations," he said. "I don't know if Eisenkot will be better than Golan in terms of security, but I think we have bigger problems: economics, social problems, education, health. We didn't get new neighbours on October 7 - it was a major event, but didn't change how we see ourselves."

But on some of the biggest international issues, the gap between government and opposition is not as large as it may appear.

Gadi Eisenkot has promised to end Hamas rule in Gaza within 18 months, either through a US-led peace plan or through "military and operational capabilities".

All the main opposition leaders have backed some form of Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, which has expanded greatly under the current government and is illegal under international law. None has openly endorsed full Palestinian statehood, something Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to prevent. Eisenkot has spoken of creating the conditions for "autonomy or state-minus" under ultimate Israeli security control.

Tuesday’s vote could easily end in deadlock, with neither government nor opposition able to form a majority without Arab party support, and polls suggest those parties could win enough seats to act as kingmakers. So far, all but one of Israel’s Jewish opposition parties have refused to work with either of the two Arab party blocs.

With Benjamin Netanyahu warning more loudly about new threats from Iran, opposition figures warning of possible disruption to the vote, and Israeli rights activists warning of a further rise in settler violence in the occupied West Bank, political instability at home could leave Israelis facing both a fresh test of their democracy and new security threats.