‘Israel is always going to be at war’
In Tel Aviv, one of Israel’s more liberal hubs, Ben Friedhaim sits with his young daughter in HaKnesset Square as waves gently lap onto the nearby beach just days before the election. Even during Shabbat, the boardwalk here is full of families basking in the sunshine, electric scooters whizzing past, and bars blasting American hits. Ice cream melts down his daughter’s hand as he tells me about his family’s recent return to the country. He came to vote.
Friedhaim, who now lives in Prague, is one of more than an estimated 80,000 Israelis who returned to the country this week, having left after Oct. 7, when, he says, things got “scary.” Without the option of absentee voting in most cases, this cohort signals how important this election is. For Friedhaim, he wants to make Israel feel safe for his daughter to grow up here; this safety, in his mind, is provided by the Israeli military. “I think the army is very important when she turns 18,” he said about his toddler. The military is crucial to many here, given the country’s embattled status. “It is an important election, but Israel is always going to be at war,” he said. “There is no diplomatic solution.”
Indeed, even as the election seems so critical that people like Friedhaim are returning home to vote in it, there’s a certain stasis to what’s to come. A largely right-wing Zionist vision appears entrenched across Israel’s political bench, and most candidates hoping to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu in this election offer little clarity on the future facing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, or the broader region.
The field has been crowded: 36 parties initially in the running. The main challengers to Netanyahu include Gadi Eisenkot of the Yashar party, the centrist former army chief of staff who opposes a two-state solution and backs some settlements in the West Bank. Former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, of the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party, is also in the running, and previously said the two-state solution is dead. And there’s Naftali Bennett, a nationalist businessman who rejects Palestinian self-determination—that’s the candidate Friedhaim is voting for because “he comes from a right-wing background.”
There’s also the country’s left-leaning Democrats party, fronted by Yair Golan, who is more open to ending wars and reaching a two-state solution, though he believes that it’s not immediately realistic. Eisenkot—who also lost a son in Gaza—is essentially fronting this coalition bloc, hoping to oust Netanyahu. Then there are a handful of ultra-far-right figures, Orthodox parties, and the country’s Arab parties, none of which had a chance to win the majority outright.
Just after 10 local time here on election night, the first exit polls were published: Many showed Eisenkot’s coalition initially holding a narrow lead over Netanyahu’s bloc, but no clear majority. By morning the results had already shifted toward Netanyahu, casting uncertainty over what comes next. Regardless of who wins the count, these factions will still have to work together to form a government and determine the next leader. Notably, it was a historic night for the Arab parties—but even now, it’s too early to tell what the next government will look like.
The backdrop to this election has been one of tension, dissatisfaction, and fear. Even if a new coalition ushers in top-level change, it might do little to resolve the much deeper fractures beneath it. [Continue reading…]
For weeks, polls have been predicting a surge in Arab voter turnout compared to previous Israeli elections, perhaps reaching as high as 70 percent. Yesterday’s results blew those predictions out of the water, with early estimates suggesting turnout was around 80 percent — the highest among Palestinian citizens of Israel in decades, and above the national average.
With final votes still being counted, the two Arab parties — the Joint List and the United Arab List (Ra’am) — are projected to achieve a combined 18–19 out of the Knesset’s 120 seats, surpassing their previous record of 15 in 2020. In every sense, yesterday was a historic day for Palestinian politics in Israel.
Exit polls and expert analyses were not necessary to prove it. You only had to stand outside polling stations in Arab communities, as I did all day, and remember what the same places had looked like during previous elections.
This was the ninth election that I have voted in, and the eighth that I have covered as a journalist. But I have never seen anything like what I saw yesterday.
The signs had been there even earlier. In past elections, when I asked people in the weeks leading up to election day whether they planned to vote, I would usually hear some version of the same response: “There’s no one to vote for,” “They’ve all disappointed us,” or “What difference will it make? The state will do whatever it wants anyway.” Sometimes someone would spend 10 minutes explaining why they didn’t believe in elections, and by the end I still would not know whether they planned to stay home on election day.
This time, that discussion was almost entirely absent. “Of course I’m voting” was the response I heard over and over again. [Continue reading…]