Israel Might Change After Its Election, but Not Much
Original Opinion:
Jewish and Arab voters with Israeli citizenship massively flocked to voting stations on Tuesday, October 27, for the elections to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. These were the first elections since the formation, in 2022, of the most reactionary government in the Zionist state’s history. For the last four years, this far-right coalition joined Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and the neo-Nazi groups headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich together with ultra-Orthodox religious parties. As polls had forecast, the ruling bloc led by incumbent Prime Minister Netanyahu and the opposition alliance led by the former Chief of the General Staff of Israel’s armed forces, Gadi Eisenkot, ended the race in what current estimates see as a tie. It may take a few days before definitive results are announced and several weeks of wheeling and dealing among Knesset factions before the shape of the next cabinet is known. As has been amply emphasized, the most crucial particularity of the recent elections is that they were the first held since the Hamas-led operation of October 7, 2023 triggered the genocidal war launched by the Israeli army on Gaza, displacing its inhabitants and destroying its buildings wholesale. This has been accompanied with a...
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