Israel’s latest election is just another chapter in the endless cycle of a state built on occupation, displacement, and militarism choosing more of the same. Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc pulling ahead in the partial counts is the predictable outcome of a society that has been radicalised by decades of expansionism, collective punishment in Gaza, and the systematic denial of Palestinian rights.
The high turnout and the surge for Arab parties are the only faintly hopeful notes — Israeli Palestinians showing up in force against a government that treats them as a demographic threat rather than equal citizens. Yet even that will likely be neutralised. Both Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot have made clear they prefer Jewish-Zionist majorities and will do everything possible to avoid real power-sharing with the Arab lists. The “deadlock” is theatre; the underlying consensus remains ironclad: maintain the occupation, keep Gaza under siege or worse, expand settlements, and treat any talk of genuine Palestinian self-determination as existential danger.
Netanyahu’s possible return is especially grim. This is the man who oversaw the catastrophic intelligence and policy failures that enabled October 7, then responded with one of the most destructive campaigns in modern history — tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths, mass displacement, and the near-total devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure. His survival in power, even if short of a clean majority, signals that large parts of the Israeli Jewish public still reward maximalist force and rejectionism. The partial-count shift toward his bloc is not a “security preference”; it is the electoral expression of a society that has internalised the logic of permanent domination.
Eisenkot is no real alternative. A former IDF chief of staff who helped refine the army’s doctrine of overwhelming force against civilian areas (the so-called Dahiyeh doctrine), he lost family members in the war yet still operates firmly inside the Zionist security consensus. His talk of “change” and national service is cosmetic. He will not dismantle the occupation, end the blockade, or recognise a sovereign Palestinian state with full rights. At best, he offers a more polished, less chaotic version of the same ethno-nationalist project. Framing him as somehow “worse” or “better” misses the point: the Israeli political spectrum from Likud to the so-called centrists is constrained by the same foundational commitment to Jewish supremacy between the river and the sea.
The real story is not which ageing general or longtime premier scrapes together 61 seats. It is that after the horror of October 7 and the far greater horror of the response, Israeli voters largely refused to reject the system that produced both. The occupation continues, the settlements grow, Gaza remains a ruined open-air prison, and the international community’s mild rebukes change nothing on the ground. Until the underlying structure of dispossession and apartheid is confronted, every Israeli election will simply recycle the same violent status quo under slightly different branding.
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📽️ Credit: TYT
