For nearly four years, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has seemed to be one crisis away from collapse. It has weathered a bitter fight over the judiciary, the shock of the Oct. 7 attack, a devastating war in Gaza, widening regional confrontations and a rupture over military service for ultra-Orthodox Jews. It has faced protests demanding accountability and an official inquiry into the failures that preceded the attack.
Yet, again and again, the coalition has held.
That endurance may be one of the more consequential facts of political life in Israel heading into the Oct. 27 election. The coalition began with 64 seats in the 120-member Knesset — a relatively comfortable majority by Israeli standards — but its partners have often appeared to have little in common beyond their determination to preserve their place in power. Now, for the first time since the Knesset was elected in 1988, a governing coalition is completing its full legal term without an early election. The question is whether Netanyahu’s ability to keep such a fractious alliance together will prove to be an electoral strength, or whether voters will turn the election into a reckoning.
A Coalition Bound by Mutual Interests
When Netanyahu formed his government at the end of 2022, he brought together parties with sharply different priorities. What united them was less a common political vision than a common dependence on the government’s survival.
Likud wanted Netanyahu to remain prime minister. Shas and United Torah Judaism wanted to preserve the budgets allocated to their institutions and secure an arrangement exempting yeshiva students from military service. The Religious Zionism and Jewish Power parties made settlement expansion and a tougher policy toward the Palestinians central to their demands.
The arrangement created a paradox: The very divisions that made the coalition appear fragile also gave its members reasons to keep it alive.
That is how Israeli political analyst Eli Nissan sees it. The coalition’s weakness is “its strength,” he told MBN in an interview. Each partner understands that bringing down the government could cost it political gains and financial resources — while an election offered no guarantee of returning with the same influence.
The religious parties secured substantial budgets. The pro-settlement right won gains that would have been difficult to obtain under a different coalition. The practical bargain, Nissan said, amounted to a simple rule: “You give me, I give you.”
For Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, repeated threats to leave the coalition did not necessarily amount to a desire to bring it down. So long as the government survived, they could pursue settlement projects, legalize Israeli outposts and expand Israel’s presence in the West Bank.
There was also a more immediate political calculation. At various points, polls placed Smotrich’s party close to the 3.25% electoral threshold. An early election, therefore, could have ended not with greater influence but with political extinction.
The religious parties faced their own version of the same dilemma. The dispute over the military draft law was profound and repeatedly brought the coalition close to rupture. But toppling the government could have produced a successor coalition less willing to accommodate their demands.
So, the crises became negotiations. Arguments became bargaining sessions. Threats to leave became leverage. The coalition repeatedly approached the edge without going over it.
War as a Political Shield
Then came Oct. 7, 2023.
In the aftermath of the attack, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot joined an emergency government and a small war cabinet. Their presence gave Netanyahu broader political cover during the early stages of the war, lending the government a sense of national unity at a moment of extraordinary crisis.
That unity did not last. Gantz and Eisenkot withdrew in June 2024 over disagreements about the conduct of the war and the absence of a political plan for Gaza’s future. But their departure did not bring down the government. Netanyahu’s original coalition still had a parliamentary majority.
The war also changed the political cost of calling for elections. With Israel fighting on multiple fronts, demands for an election became entangled with the question of whether it was appropriate to dismantle a government during wartime. For Netanyahu, the continuing conflict also provided time to rebuild his image as the leader overseeing a confrontation across the region.
But another issue never disappeared: accountability.
Families of those killed and taken hostage, along with political opponents, continued to demand answers about the failures surrounding Oct. 7. Netanyahu resisted calls for an independent official commission of inquiry.
The issue has grown more politically combustible as reports have emerged of warnings issued before the attack.
Haaretz reported that United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan warned Netanyahu before the attack that Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., was preparing a major operation, but that the warning was not passed on to the heads of Israel’s security agencies. The Jerusalem Post reported, citing a security source, that Ronen Bar, the former head of the Shin Bet, warned Netanyahu on Oct. 1, 2023, that Hamas was preparing “something extreme.” He recommended targeting Yahya Sinwar and other Hamas leaders, but the recommendation was not accepted.
For Netanyahu’s opponents, the political question is no longer limited to who bears responsibility for the failures of Oct. 7. It is also: What did the prime minister know before the attack, and what did he do with the warnings?
Eisenkot Emerges as Netanyahu’s Main Rival
Against that backdrop, Gadi Eisenkot has emerged as Netanyahu’s most serious challenger.
A former Israeli military chief of staff, Eisenkot entered the emergency government after Oct. 7. In December 2023, he lost his son, Gal, during fighting in Gaza. He left the war cabinet and the government in June 2024.
After departing the National Unity Party, he founded Yashar, a new political force that has begun competing with Likud and, in some polls, overtaking it.
But Israeli elections are not won simply by finishing first.
A party can emerge as the largest faction without the ability to form a government. Under Israel’s parliamentary system, a prospective prime minister must assemble the support of at least 61 lawmakers. And the polls suggest a contest far more complicated than simply Netanyahu versus Eisenkot. Their two camps remain close, with both falling short of a majority in a number of scenarios.
Nissan said Eisenkot is considering forming a minority government if his side comes close to 57 seats, then working to attract dissatisfied Likud lawmakers to complete the majority.
But that path is fraught with uncertainty. It is difficult to count on defections from Likud before the party itself determines Netanyahu’s future.
Another possibility lies with the Arab parties, particularly the United Arab List, led by Mansour Abbas.
Here, too, the opposition faces a political dilemma. Eisenkot and other Jewish opposition parties have approached the possibility cautiously, wary that Likud could portray dependence on Arab support — even support from outside the government — as evidence that an alternative coalition lacks legitimacy.
“If Eisenkot relies on the United Arab List, Likud will launch a fierce attack against him,” Nissan said. Eisenkot may therefore seek the party’s backing from outside the government without formally bringing it into the coalition.
The problem illustrates a longstanding paradox in Israeli politics: Arab parties can determine the parliamentary arithmetic, but many Zionist parties remain reluctant to treat them as full partners in governing.
Nissan also cautions against reading too much into the polls. Surveys conducted by Israel’s television channels have produced markedly different results, he said, reflecting differences in sampling, question wording and methodology. Channel 14, for example, generally gives Likud and the Netanyahu camp stronger numbers than Channels 11, 12 and 13.
Regional Stakes
Whatever happens on election day, the consequences will extend well beyond Israel’s borders.
Gaza, Lebanon and Iran — along with Israel’s relationship with the United States — are likely to figure prominently in the campaign. Each could become a measure of the government’s performance, depending on which political camp is doing the measuring.
Netanyahu has presented Israel’s military operations and the weakening of its adversaries as evidence that his government has restored deterrence after Oct. 7. His opponents counter that battlefield achievements have not produced stable political arrangements, and that continuing wars do not erase the leadership’s responsibility for the failure that preceded them.
The electoral contest could also encourage both Netanyahu and his rivals to adopt an even harder security line.
A cease-fire in Gaza, a withdrawal from positions in Lebanon or a regional agreement would not be judged solely on its diplomatic merits. Each would be filtered through the demands of an election campaign.
Would a deal be presented as an achievement that brought hostages home and restored calm? Or as a premature concession before the promised “victory” had been achieved?
Iran presents a similar calculation. Escalation can reinforce an image of decisive leadership, but it also carries military and economic risks that could ultimately damage the government.
A change in government, meanwhile, would not necessarily mean a wholesale change in Israeli policy toward the Palestinians or the wider region. Most of Netanyahu’s principal rivals come from the military establishment or the center-right and hold hawkish positions on a number of security issues.
If a political transition comes, the earliest differences may therefore be seen less in Israel’s core positions than in how decisions are made: the relationship between the political leadership and the security and judicial institutions, and the willingness to pursue regional political arrangements.
Netanyahu’s Enduring Advantage
For all the uncertainty, Netanyahu retains an advantage that does not appear neatly in polling tables. For a broad segment of Likud voters, he has become inseparable from the party itself. His opponents, by contrast, have spent years building their camp around a single idea: “Anyone but Netanyahu.”
Nissan believes the prime minister still has another asset — his political instincts. He describes Netanyahu as a “political fox,” someone who could use the final weeks of the campaign to weaken Eisenkot and draw undecided voters back toward Likud. That could prove decisive in a contest where neither side appears certain of a majority.
But Netanyahu enters this election in a different position from his previous campaigns. He is not simply defending a record in office or asking voters to judge his policies.
He is also confronting a question that has followed him since Oct. 7: Who was responsible for Israel’s greatest security failure in modern history? And he is doing so after leading a government that, despite years of crises, threats and attempts to bring it down, managed to survive all of them.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
