Netanyahu and Eisenkot Want You to Forget the War

Israeli troops in Gaza, 2023. Credit: IDF Spokesperson

The election campaign is currently focused on two issues: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's disregard of the warnings he received before the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and Arab representation in the Knesset and the government.

Each side targets its opponent's pressure points. The "bloc of change" emphasizes that the prime minister shirked responsibility, while Netanyahu relies on polls that indicate Gadi Eisenkot's emerging difficulty in forming a coalition without Arab parties' support.

These are important, even critical, issues. A country whose leader isn't accountable and tries to prevent political representation for a fifth of its citizens will find it difficult to call itself a democracy. But there is another equally important issue that has been pushed to the margins: the war. Remember?

An ongoing war across multiple fronts for the past three years. A war whose budgetary cost is approaching 450 billion shekels ($147 billion). A war for which the Israel Defense Forces is drafting combat soldiers for 100 days of reserve duty this year. A war in which Israel is occupying most of the Gaza Strip, a large area in southern Lebanon and hundreds of additional square kilometers in Syria.

This situation seems normal, apparently. In the absence of public pressure to change it, candidates aren't talking about ending the war in the foreseeable future. They settle for empty slogans about "eliminating Hamas" – a worn-out headline that has starred in many past election campaigns, but Hamas alone has remained unimpressed and continues its operations. Assassinations, announced daily by the IDF, of a Nukhba force operative who invaded Israel on October 7 or abused hostages, or some commander in Rafah, don't affect the balance of power in Gaza.

Here's a reminder of Israel's security situation on the eve of the election. The main front was and remains in the West Bank, where the bulk of the IDF's regular ground force is deployed. Its tasks are seemingly contradictory: both to prevent a third Palestinian intifada, and also enable land grabbing, settlements' expansion and the oppression of the Palestinians. Netanyahu is completely committed to this policy. Eisenkot warned that the violence in the West Bank by "extremist Jewish militias" was "criminal terrorism," while opposing a Palestinian state in the same breath.

Gadi Eisenkot on the campaign trail in Jerusalem this month. Credit: Itay Cohen

It's easy and convenient to dismiss the problem as a private initiative of violent settlers against whom the state has "lost control." But Eisenkot, who served as the region's commander and as IDF chief, should know that the army has reached capacity in the West Bank in order to protect the hundreds of settlements, outposts and private farms from which that terror originates.

After the election, this reality will hit Israel with full force. The British-European sanctions initiative aims to stop settlement activity and Jewish terror in the West Bank, and is not presented as punishment for Israel's actions in Gaza. One can understand why: Israel destroyed Gaza and killed tens of thousands of its residents only after being brutally attacked on October 7. One can argue that the Israeli response was excessive, but the first shot was fired by Hamas, not the IDF.

In the West Bank, on the other hand, Israel has no October 7 to serve as an excuse for its actions. It cannot convince anyone in the world that its West Bank policy is justified, and it's easy to mobilize international support for sanctions against the settlements and those who assist them.

At home, too, Israelis will wake up after the election to the price of the war – whether through tax hikes to fund defense expenditures, or through the deepening gaps in bearing the burden of military service, with its consequences in lives lost and bodily and psychological damage.

That's why it's important that voters remember not only what happened on October 7, but also what lies ahead, and the price they're about to pay for fulfilling Netanyahu's Sparta-like visions and endless war, which he declares he will continue. Whereas his opponents, who promise a "government of repair" after the disasters of the current coalition, must begin their repair by ending the war. There's no more urgent step for saving Israel.