Israel Votes, but Peace Barely Features on the Ballot

Israelis go to the polls next week in an election that analysts say may change the prime minister but not the state’s direction. Palestinians have no visible path to statehood, while the West Bank edges toward what one researcher calls combustible conditions.

The vote pits Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and its ultranationalist allies against an opposition led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party. Analysts say the gap between them is one of degree, not direction: how aggressively Israel fights its wars, how far settlement expansion goes in the West Bank, and whether a leader chooses diplomacy at all.

For Palestinians, that’s a grim calculation. Palestinian analyst Ghassan Al-Khatib said Israeli parties are competing to project harder-line positions as public opinion shifts further right. “The substance of the policy remains the same: No to a Palestinian state and yes to further settlement expansion. On this, they are all in agreement,” he said. A government led by Netanyahu’s opponents might try to repair Israel’s international standing by curbing some settler violence or pursuing settlement expansion less conspicuously, Al-Khatib said, but that would change style, not substance.

A Region Shaped by October 7

Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israeli communities, and the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran that followed, hardened Israel’s policy assumptions. As the third anniversary of that atrocity approaches, Israel’s security doctrine rests on breaking Iran, keeping buffer zones beyond its borders and using force to deter enemies.

Aviv Bushinsky, a former adviser to Netanyahu, was blunt about what a Netanyahu victory would mean. “If Netanyahu is elected, he’ll do whatever he thinks he wants to do. Expansion of the settlements will continue. The wars against Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah will continue,” he said. “What you see now is what you’ll see after the election, maybe even more aggressively. As long as Iran is in such a situation, it’s a waste of time talking about Palestine.”

Netanyahu has said Israel must prioritize “prevention and offense over containment and defense,” including pre-emptive strikes. In a speech this week he went further. “Completing the task means toppling the terrorist regime in Iran, the head of the venomous octopus,” he said. US President Donald Trump has praised him as a “great warrior prime minister.”

Analysts said a win backed by far-right coalition partners could embolden Netanyahu to intensify the war with Iran, tighten Israel’s grip on the occupied West Bank and sideline diplomacy further.

Voices of Doubt, and a Warning From the West Bank

Not everyone believes force can deliver the outcome Netanyahu promises. Analysts questioned whether anything short of a US-Israeli ground invasion would make Tehran abandon what it sees as core security interests. Michael Young of the Carnegie Middle East Center said Israel’s security establishment and much of its political class share an outlook built around confronting Iran, “forward defense” and military deterrence. “This is a quagmire,” he said. “The Iranians can outlast Trump.” Analysts said Hezbollah and Hamas have weakened, but Iran-aligned groups survived, and the conflict could strengthen Tehran’s resolve to pursue a nuclear deterrent.

Gulf voices are uneasy too. Abdulaziz Sager, chairman of the Gulf Research Center, said “Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon are damaging,” while warning that without a settlement with Iran, “the region could be heading toward 50 years of Iranian hegemony.”

On the ground, the risks are more immediate. Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, who has conducted research in the West Bank, said growing settler violence, Palestinian frustration and the lack of a “political horizon” had created conditions where even a minor trigger could spark a wider uprising.

The Case for a Different Destination

In a separate opinion article, Gershon Baskin, the Middle East director of the International Communities Organization and co-head of the Alliance for Two States, argued that replacing Netanyahu alone wouldn’t end the conflict. He said Israel’s center-left leaders have avoided discussing the Palestinian issue and Israel’s regional future before the vote, apparently believing those subjects would cost votes.

If Netanyahu’s opponents form the next government, Baskin wrote, they should establish an independent state commission of inquiry into the failures of October 7, reverse damaging legislation, restore democratic institutions’ independence and set out a credible strategy to end the conflict. His proposed regional deal would need American leadership and active participation from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan, combining normalization with security guarantees, Gaza reconstruction and an irreversible process toward a Palestinian state alongside Israel. He described this not as a concession but as a strategic choice in Israel’s long-term interests.

Baskin also called President Mahmoud Abbas’ recent decision to postpone Palestinian elections troubling. Palestinians have gone approximately two decades without national elections, he wrote, and a generation has reached adulthood without voting. He urged the next Israeli government to support the earliest possible presidential and parliamentary elections across the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, saying Jerusalem can’t remain an excuse to block the vote. Leaders, he said, must be chosen by Palestinians, not appointed by Israel, Washington or Arab states.

For Gaza, he proposed a transitional arrangement: a Palestinian technocratic administration, a professional Palestinian police force and an international stabilization presence, enabling reconstruction, Israeli military withdrawal and an end to Hamas’ armed control. Settlement expansion and violence in the West Bank, he said, undermine any negotiated future. “Israelis deserve that honesty,” he wrote, urging the next government to tell the public what difficult choices an agreement would require.

Why This Matters: Voters in Israel will pick a government, yet the analysts quoted here suggest the choices on offer rarely include a Palestinian state. For Palestinians, that means more of the same daily reality: settlement growth, settler violence and a political horizon that keeps receding. For Israelis, it means more wars with no stated endpoint. Baskin’s formulation captures the stakes: “Israel will never have security until Palestinians have freedom, and Palestinians will never have freedom until Israel has security.” Whether any new government is willing to say that out loud and back it with a strategy may matter more than who wins.