Our Wednesday News Analysis | Israeli Elections: What Awaits the Palestinians?

Israeli politicians, from left to right: Naftali Bennett, Benjamin Netanyahu, Gadi Eisenkot, and Itamar Ben-Gvir. (Illustration: PC)

In the past, many Palestinians and Arabs followed Israeli elections closely.

They did so not because they entertained illusions that a Zionist leader would deliver peace and justice, dismantle the occupation or remove illegal settlements. Rather, they feared that some Israeli leaders were worse than others. They hoped to avert the worst-case scenario.

Over time, however, that distinction gave way to the belief that all Israeli leaders were essentially the same. This is not pessimism. It is experience.

Consider, for example, the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements during the Oslo peace process under Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Between 1992 and 1995, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, increased from 111,673 to 140,235 – a rise of more than 25 percent, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, drawing on Israeli statistical records.

The same pattern continued under the Labor government of Ehud Barak.

Within his first six months, Barak’s government issued tenders for 3,196 settlement housing units, exceeding the annual average under his right-wing predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.

When Naftali Bennett formed a coalition government in June 2021 that included the Arab party Ra’am, settlement expansion continued unabated.

According to Peace Now, the Bennett–Lapid government advanced plans for 7,292 settlement housing units during its first year, a 26-percent increase over the annual average recorded under previous Netanyahu governments.

The settlements are themselves a driving force behind the occupation. They require land, and therefore land confiscation; protection, and therefore an expanded military presence; water, roads and infrastructure, and therefore the appropriation of Palestinian resources. Together, these elements deepen dispossession and generate further Israeli violence.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the West Bank contained 645 Israeli settlement sites, outposts and other occupation installations by the end of 2025, including 350 settlement outposts...

Read more: Israeli Elections: What Awaits the Palestinians?

___________________

ANALYSIS - ISRAELI DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN GIVEN A CHANCE. IT MAY NOT GET ANOTHER

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/2026-10-28/ty-article/.premium/israeli-democracy-has-been-given-a-chance-it-may-not-get-another/000001a1-7f9d-d9b5-a3b5-7fbdd5760000

By Aluf Benn
Published October 28, 2026

Gadi Eisenkot must now persuade his partners to accept his leadership, build a framework for cooperation with the Arab parties and form a government. Netanyahu knows that many Israelis who flew in to vote won't do it again

Joint List headquarters in Nazareth, at the moment of the exit polls' release, Tuesday. Credit: Daniel Rollider

Let's start with the good news: Benjamin Netanyahu failed to prevent the election from taking place on schedule. He also failed to close the skies to Israelis coming from abroad to vote, or to disrupt voting by the Arab community.

On Tuesday, Israelis demonstrated remarkable loyalty to the democratic system by turning out in masses at the polls. They mobilized to save the country from the reign of terror of the October 7 government, and to thwart its schemes to continue the forever war abroad and the campaign of destruction at home, with the aim of turning Israel into an apartheid dictatorship.

Two groups of voters stood out in this election; above all, the Arab citizens, who came down off the fence and voted at record rates to remove the government that had abused them, abandoned their lives to murderous gangs and suppressed their right to express themselves.

Eisenkot after the exit polls came in. He's embarking on the mission of his life with integrity and good intentions, but limited political experience. Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

Four years of the government of horrors have disproved the claim that, from the perspective of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, there is no difference between the Zionist left and Itamar Ben-Gvir. It turns out that there is an enormous difference between the misdeeds of the left in the past and the current Kahanist government, which has advocated killing and population transfer, devastated Gaza and cultivated Jewish terrorism in the West Bank.

This doesn't absolve previous governments of responsibility for discriminating against Arabs, and the road to equality remains long. But Arab voters have taken a critical step in that direction.

The contribution of the second group that stood out in this election – the tens of thousands of Israelis who flew in from abroad – is still hard to quantify in terms of Knesset seats. But they showed that despite years as émigrés, Israel remains their homeland and their home, and they came to save it from the abyss toward which Netanyahu has dragged it. Only the current emergency prompted this kind of effort, something that had never happened before...

Read more: Analysis - Israeli Democracy Has Been Given a Chance. It May Not Get Another

___________________

LIBERAL ZIONISTS ARE TRYING TO DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM THE REALITY THAT ISRAELI VOTERS OVERWHELMINGLY WANT GENOCIDE

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2026/10/liberal-zionists-are-trying-to-distance-themselves-from-the-reality-that-israeli-voters-overwhelmingly-want-genocide/

By Jonathan Ofir
Published October 30, 2026

Liberal Zionists bemoan both ultra-nationalist extremists and pro-Palestine activists, but Israel's latest elections show how they ultimately come to the defense of apartheid every time.

A Palestinian boy walks past Hebrew grafitti that reads “Death to Arabs” written by Israeli settlers on the door of the Hamayel family home in the Palestinian village of Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, November 23, 2014. (Photo: Shadi Hatem/APA Images)

The recent Israeli elections brought the terrifying views of Israeli youth into full view. Videos of young Israelis calling for the mass slaughter of Palestinians or expressing their desire for the new Israeli government to go even further to the right than it already has have been making waves online, and while it’s no surprise that these soundbites go viral on social media, it is important to understand just how pervasive these views are. It is not just one or two fanatics who were taken out of context online. It is a whole new generation of Israeli youth who, in the wake of October 7 and the genocide in Gaza, are fully embracing fascism.

This is not typical internationally, where younger generations are often less nationalist-conservative than older ones. A poll from this year, conducted by Israeli Channel 12, shows that among 18- to 21-year-olds who hadn’t voted in the 2022 elections, the share identifying as right-wing rose to 75%, up from 68% in the older population. This segment, consisting of about half a million potential new voters, formed in their teens by genocide, is simply more genocidal than ever, and this obviously played a part in the elections this week.

With votes in Israel now fully counted, it is clear that the Israeli public still voted overwhelmingly right. Netanyahu’s Likud leads with 27 seats (the big opposition party Yashar, headed by ret. general Gadi Eisenkot, mastermind of the murderous ‘Dahiya Doctrine’, comes in second with 21). Although Netanyahu’s current government bloc hasn’t got a majority (it has 53 and one needs a 61 majority), the opposition bloc still contains right-wing parties like Yashar, as well as Avigdor Lieberman’s further-right Yisrael Beitenu (7), Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s Together (12), and even The Democrats led by ret. general Yair Golan (8) don’t want to talk about two states anymore. The left that is not Zionist is represented by the Palestinian-representative Joint List, with a surprising 11 seats (the conservative Palestinian Ra’am got 8) – but the Jewish Zionist bloc by and large refuses to touch them. So the ‘opposition bloc’ without the Palestinian parties has 48 seats, and while the Democrats have started considering cooperation, it is contentious. Zionist racism is the overall frame of this picture.

Perhaps one of the best ways to understand the views of this new generation of Israeli voters, and how Israeli “liberal” Zionists are trying to distance themselves from the current reality — in a futile attempt to restore a fictional version of the liberal Israeli “democracy” they cherish — is with a popular video series that veteran TV host and comedian Lior Schleien made this year.

The series followed Schleien, a proud “liberal Zionist,” as he toured schools across the country, engaging in debates with Israeli youth on topics related to the “conflict” with the Palestinians, Middle East geopolitics, and other national and religious issues.

Brace yourselves: the views of the Israeli youth, and Schleien’s misguided attempts to sway them to more “liberal” views, reveal a grim picture of the state of the Israeli political landscape, and how the genocidal apartheid state is only getting more genocidal...

Read more: Liberal Zionists are trying to distance themselves from the reality that Israeli voters overwhelmingly want genocide