Anti-Netanyahu Coalition Takes Shape, but Analysts Say Little Structural Change for Palestinians

According to Al Jazeera, Israel's four main opposition parties recently signed a joint declaration pledging not to attack each other before the October 27 parliamentary election and to cooperate in forming a coalition afterwards, with the ouster of Netanyahu as their shared top priority. However, analysts warn that even if the opposition alliance prevails, the structural oppression endured by Palestinians is unlikely to undergo any fundamental change.

The declaration was signed by the Yashar party, the Democrats, Yisrael Beytenu, and the Together alliance, spanning different factions of the Israeli political spectrum. On September 26, opposition leaders Yair Lapid, Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman, and Yair Golan met and signed the declaration, with Eisenkot seen as the opposition's most likely candidate for prime minister.

However, citing polling data from Israel's Channel 12, Al Jazeera reported that the opposition alliance is projected to win 54 of the 120 Knesset seats, while the Netanyahu bloc is projected to win 49, with neither side reaching the majority needed to form a government. Israel's leading Arab party is expected to take 13 seats, but most of the Zionist opposition leaders have explicitly ruled out partnering with it. The Arab parties, which represent roughly 20 percent of Israel's Palestinian citizens, are thus effectively shut out of the coalition-building process.

Analysts point out that the opposition's positions on the Palestinian issue are virtually indistinguishable from those of the Netanyahu camp. Samer Jaber, a political economy PhD candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London, told Al Jazeera: Palestinians should not expect a fundamental shift in Israeli policy after the Netanyahu camp's defeat. The main political blocs share core positions on the Palestinian question, including support for the existing settlement structure, while the state institutions that formulate and implement policy will remain unchanged.

The public positions of the opposition leaders are particularly hardline. Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party and a former Israeli military chief of staff, has called the idea of a Palestinian state delusional and backs the reinforcement of Israeli settlements, but opposes both the full annexation of the West Bank and the current government's E1 settlement plan — a project that would effectively cut the West Bank in two. On Gaza, Eisenkot supports advancing a US-backed peace plan from a position of strength after Hamas's full disarmament.

Bennett, leader of the Together alliance, has styled himself as more right-wing than Netanyahu, advocating a shoot-to-kill policy against Palestinians attempting to cross into Israel, firmly opposing a Palestinian state, and supporting settlement expansion, while also having criticized settler violence against Palestinians. On Gaza, he has demanded that the Israeli military remain in the territory until Hamas disarms, and has argued that Egypt — rather than Turkey or Qatar — should play the future security role.

Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu party likewise supports settlement expansion and the E1 plan, advocates the annexation of Area C of the West Bank — which makes up roughly 60 percent of the territory and is already fully under Israeli control — while transferring jurisdiction over other areas to Jordan. The party also demands that Israel retain freedom of operation in Gaza, cut off water and electricity supplies, and ultimately hand governance over to an agreed international entity.

Only Golan, leader of the Democrats, backs some form of two-state solution, but his framework envisions a responsible separation, including the full demilitarization of a future Palestinian state and full Israeli control over key areas such as the Jordan Valley.

Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and analyst, told Al Jazeera that the opposition leaders have all backed Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza, while either endorsing settlement growth or refusing to grant Palestinians full equality.

According to Al Jazeera, since the October 2025 ceasefire, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed nearly 1,500 Palestinians; the total Gaza death toll since October 2023 has surpassed 74,000.

Israeli public opinion itself is also continuing to harden. A September Pew Research Center poll found that only 17 percent of Israeli respondents believed peaceful coexistence with an independent Palestinian state was possible; an August survey by the Jewish People Policy Institute found that 38 percent of Jewish Israeli respondents supported annexing the entire West Bank, with a majority backing the retention of settlements in any two-state arrangement.

Even so, some analysts believe a new government could slow or roll back the current government's most controversial radical measures. The far-right settlement advocates Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich both hold cabinet positions, with the latter publicly stating last month that Israel should wage war in the West Bank and repeat what it has done in Gaza. Dov Waxman, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Al Jazeera that a new government could suspend the E1 settlement plan and crack down on extremist settler violence and terrorism in the West Bank.

Ehab Jabareen, a Palestinian political analyst, told Al Jazeera that a new government might be more open to American and international pressure, thereby leaving more room for Gaza reconstruction. But he added that a new government is unlikely to alter Israel's overall paradigm toward Palestinians: The difference I expect is not whether Israel maintains control over the Palestinians, but how that control is exercised, legitimized, and managed.

Amjad Iraqi, senior analyst on Israel and Palestine at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera bluntly that the current moment is already one of damage limitation. We are at a damage-limitation juncture, with the focus on minimizing harm as much as possible. Palestinians are not in a position to expect any fundamental change, but for those on the ground, every life saved and every piece of land preserved matters.