By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in Crikey

22 July 2026

When I last visited Israel in January 2024 for my sister’s wedding in Jerusalem, the mood on the Israeli streets was bleak. The recent war in Gaza was only a few months old, and more than a hundred Israeli hostages were still being held. Every cafe conversation I had with anyone seemed eventually to find its way back to the same conclusion: Benjamin Netanyahu and his government had to go.

Most of the people I spoke to in the street, as well as friends and family, were feeling a mix of rage and shock. They were furious that the Israeli government had failed so catastrophically to protect Israeli citizens, and they were aghast at the intelligence failures that had led up to October 7. Accompanying this rage was also shock that an attack of that scale could happen against Israeli civilians, all while the Israeli government and army were in disarray. The sense of betrayal was palpable.

If you had asked almost anyone in Israel at that time whether Netanyahu would still be prime minister heading into the next election, very few would have said yes. And yet today, Israelis are preparing for something they haven’t experienced in decades: an election held on schedule, with Netanyahu once again on the ballot.

On October 27, Israelis will head to the polls in the country’s first election since the Hamas attack. Just last week, the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, dissolved after completing its full four-year term, making it the first Israeli Parliament since 1988 to serve out its full mandate.

Israeli elections are famously confusing to outsiders. There are more parties than most Australians would ever consider normal, extended coalition negotiations to form a government that can drag on for weeks, and plenty of politicians who swear they will never govern together, then go on to do exactly that six months later.

Which brings us to Netanyahu.

If your understanding of Israel comes largely through international headlines, you could be forgiven for assuming that Netanyahu is enormously popular in Israel. After all, he has dominated the nation’s politics for almost two decades, even becoming the country’s longest-serving prime minister across his three terms. Surely someone who has lasted that long must command overwhelming public support?

The short answer is: not exactly.

The strange truth is that Netanyahu is one of the country’s least popular current politicians vying for reelection, with a recent poll putting his approval rating at 38%, and his disapproval rating at a whopping 58%. Another found 49% of people would back an anti-Netanyahu bloc, with just 36% supporting him. And yet, somehow, he is still one of Israel’s most formidable electoral forces. I know that sounds contradictory, but perhaps you are unfamiliar with the Israeli electoral system.

Unlike in Australia, Israelis don’t vote for a local member in a local seat. They vote for a political party, and the country is treated as one giant electorate, with the 120 seats in Israeli Parliament allocated according to each party’s share of the national vote. This voting set-up means that in every single election held since the establishment of Israel in 1948, no single party has ever won outright. Israeli governments are stitched together through coalitions of parties that often disagree on almost everything except the belief that, somehow, governing together is preferable to another election.

This upcoming election will be the first time Israelis have had the opportunity to pass judgement on Netanyahu and his government — the one that presided over the worst security failure in the country’s history. On October 7, Hamas murdered around 1,200 people, took 250 hostages, and Israel began its devastating war in Gaza, with approximately 73,000 Palestinians killed, including combatants, and an estimated 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents displaced and living in tents.

For Israelis, October 7 shattered the assumption that, however imperfect their leaders were, the country could ultimately keep them safe. The upcoming election will therefore revolve around three questions:

-Who bears responsibility for October 7?

-Who is best placed to keep Israel and Israelis safe now?

-What kind of country should emerge once Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran are finally over?

Unsurprisingly, security considerations will dominate this election. With ongoing wars, tens of thousands of Israeli reservists have spent hundreds of days away from their families, careers and studies as Israel faces a massive manpower shortage. With mandatory military conscription, almost everyone in Israel knows someone who has served, someone who has been wounded, or someone who never came home.

Israelis are also wrestling with questions that were fiercely dividing the country long before October 7. Netanyahu’s attempt to overhaul the Israeli court system, which many believe will threaten Israel’s democratic character, and in the lead-up to October 7 prompted months of enormous street protests, is still not resolved.

The long-running exemption from military service for many ultra-Orthodox Jewish men has become increasingly contentious within Israel, as reservists shoulder repeated deployments and the Israeli army struggles with manpower. There are existential internal debates in Israel about the balance between religion and state, the limits of executive power, and how a country that has spent much of the past three years mobilised for war continues to function.

And yet here we are. Netanyahu is in the mix, with polls showing his Likud Party is on track to win dozens of seats.

Netanyahu’s opponents, however, are not one united alternative government waiting in the wings. Those seeking to replace him come from very different parts of the political spectrum. Benny Gantz, a former Israeli army chief of staff and a former coalition partner of Netanyahu, and Yair Lapid, a former Israeli prime minister, formally merged into a single joint ticket called “Together” in April, and is now polling as Likud’s main rival. Yair Golan, another former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army, now leads the Democrats, which has emphasised strengthening Israel’s democracy and reforming the country’s political system.

Additional parties vying for election include former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett and former Israeli army chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, whose parties remain strongly focused on security issues. Israel’s Parliament also includes Arab-Israeli political parties, representing Israel’s Arab citizens, who constitute around 20% of Israel’s population. Parties such as Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al have previously won seats in Israeli Parliament. In 2021, Ra’am became the first Arab party in Israel’s history to join an Israeli governing coalition.

The challenge for all of Netanyahu’s opponents is that while many Israelis believe the government bears responsibility for the failures of October 7, replacing Netanyahu requires answering a much harder question: who can be trusted to lead Israel through an ongoing period of war and uncertainty?

This is perhaps the hardest thing for outsiders to understand. As most Israelis will vote with security considerations at the forefront of their minds — as opposed to other countries where social issues like housing or welfare will dominate — in Israel it is entirely possible to believe Netanyahu bears significant responsibility for October 7, while also believing there is no obvious alternative capable of leading Israel through wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

Military successes against Iran and Hezbollah have strengthened Netanyahu’s standing with parts of the Israeli electorate. According to recent polling, 70% of coalition voters believed Israel had won or would likely win the campaign against Iran, compared with only 16% of opposition voters. It also found that 56% of coalition voters were satisfied with Israel’s military achievements in Iran, compared with 24% of opposition voters. In addition, Netanyahu’s opponents remain fragmented, and many Israelis who have lost faith in him have not necessarily found faith in anyone else who is currently running for election.

Australians often view elections as straightforward verdicts on governments, how they benefit or don’t benefit our lives through housing, job creation, tax, schools, etc. Israeli elections are messier than that. More than anything, they are shaped by competing considerations, including religious and secular divides, by war and by ongoing security concerns.

For those watching from Australia, it is tempting to see this election as simply a referendum on Netanyahu. But this election is much more than that. In a country still trying to process October 7, its greatest collective trauma in generations, while continuing to fight wars on multiple fronts, every vote cast this upcoming October will inevitably be about the future direction of the country.

Israelis will be deciding what lessons they believe their country should take from their darkest day in Israel’s modern history, and who they trust to lead them into whatever comes next.