Five Key Questions After Israel’s Elections
Yousef Munayyer For the first time since October 7, 2023, and since a judicial coup attempt by the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israelis have had an opportunity to vote in Knesset elections that will determine the shape of the next Israeli government. The results of the vote, however, bring several key questions to the fore and produce many others we cannot yet answer. 1. Is Israeli Politics at a Dead End? Like a broken GPS system that somehow always brings you right back to the same cul-de-sac instead of taking you forward, Israeli politics have once again arrived at a familiar dead end. For the eighth time in 13 years, an Israeli election that effectively served as a referendum on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yielded a similar result: a divided Jewish electorate that may well leave Netanyahu in power. Time and again, challengers to Netanyahu have framed their campaigns around bringing an end to his rule, which they have characterized as detrimental to the interests of the State of Israel—including its very existence. Time and again, these challengers—including Issac Herzog, Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz, Naftali Bennett, and newcomer Gadi Eisenkot—have failed to defeat Netanyahu and his allies decisively. The one exception was the 2021 election, which resulted in a Bennett-Lapid government. Even then, this victory was hardly a complete evisceration of Netanyahu. It succeeded only through the support of a party of Palestinian citizens of Israel and lasted one year before collapsing, only to...
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