Israel’s Oct. 27 Vote Puts Netanyahu’s Legacy, Future at Stake

Israel is set to hold national elections on Oct. 27, marking the first vote since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and the wars that followed. Once again, Benjamin Netanyahu’s long political career and lasting legacy are at the heart of what many view as one of the most consequential elections in the country’s history.

The nation’s longest-serving prime minister has presided over Israel’s rise as a free-market, high-tech economy and the expansion of its influence as a regional military power.

Zvika Klein, editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, told News Outlet that Israelis younger than 20 “don’t even know an Israel without him being prime minister,” apart from the brief period between 2021 and 2022 when Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid led a coalition government for more than a year. The two former prime ministers are joining forces again on a shared slate for the upcoming election.

Gadi Taub, co-host of Tablet’s Israel Update podcast, said voters are likely to focus on one overriding issue: which leader is best equipped to build on Netanyahu’s record, particularly the campaign to dismantle much of the Iranian-backed Shiite network surrounding Israel.

“The job is not finished,” Taub said, pointing to Netanyahu’s declaration, made two days after Oct. 7, that Israel would transform the Middle East.

For Eylon Levy, a former spokesman for the State of Israel, the election offers many Israelis a chance to redirect the country after what he called its greatest national disaster. Netanyahu, who has spent roughly two decades in office cumulatively, is campaigning not only for political survival but also for control of how his tenure will be remembered.

“He doesn’t want to go down in history books as the man on whose watch the Oct. 7 massacre happened,” Levy said. “He wants to extend his political career and claim the extraordinary military achievements of recent years as part of his leadership record.”

Levy said the contest is being shaped by widespread anger over who bears responsibility for the Oct. 7 attack, as well as frustration over the social and economic toll of maintaining the war.

Most polling does not show either Netanyahu’s governing bloc or the opposition led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot securing a majority. Levy said the likeliest result is another political stalemate, leaving Netanyahu as caretaker prime minister until a new coalition takes office. Israel endured five elections between 2019 and 2022 during an extended period of political uncertainty.

Israel’s electoral system differs sharply from that of the United States. Voters choose parties rather than individual candidates to fill seats in the 120-member Knesset. Seats are distributed through proportional representation, and parties generally need about 3.25% of the vote to enter parliament.

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Because no party has ever won more than half the vote, the leaders of the largest parties must negotiate with smaller factions after every election to assemble a governing coalition.

A leader becomes prime minister by securing the backing of at least 61 lawmakers—one more than half the Knesset—while allied parties receive cabinet positions, said Levy, host of Israeli Channel 16’s international program “From Here to There” and the election podcast “EYLON:Israel Electioncast.”

Klein noted that this is the first time in decades an Israeli government has remained in power for an entire term.

The opposition is loosely united under the slogan “Rak Lo Bibi,” or “anyone but Bibi,” Klein said. The group includes Eisenkot’s Yashar party, the BeYachad alliance led by Bennett and Lapid, and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu—parties whose leaders have all worked with Netanyahu at various points.

The broader “change” alliance also includes The Democrats, which Klein identified as its most left-leaning faction.

The conservative commentator Taub said, “When you look at the candidates on the left, one after the other, they wanted to stop the war very early already in Gaza. Gadi Eisenkot, the leading contender on the left, wanted to finish the war after the pager operation, where he said we should cut a deal with Hezbollah. Netanyahu kept saying total victory,” he added.

The vulnerability on the right, Taub said, is that victory has not been total.

“We have an existential danger. That danger is Iran, with the support of Russia and China, rehabilitating its nuclear program, which we can’t let happen. It is not all up to us; there is the U.S. dealing directly with this, but this is going to be the decisive issue,” Taub concluded.