How the Gaza War Has Pushed Israel's Election Deeper into the Far Right

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu warned on September 29 that the country faced a pre-election attack threat, then pivoted to the ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip, saying the Israeli military had recently killed more than one hundred "terrorists." According to Al Jazeera, this strategy of bundling the Gaza war, the election and national security is not accidental — analysts view it as the core narrative of Netanyahu's bid for re-election: that after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, which killed 1,139 Israelis and triggered the war on Gaza (Israeli strikes have since killed more than 74,000 Palestinians in Gaza), only he can guarantee Israel's security.

The election is institutionalizing the wartime logic. According to Al Jazeera, far-right Finance Minister Smotrich told Ynet last month that the Israeli army should "open a war" in the occupied West Bank and "do there what we did in Gaza." His election partner subsequently told the Jerusalem Post in an interview that "the enemy is Gaza, not Hamas" and called for the annexation of Gaza after the election; he also said "the baby who will be born tomorrow in Gaza will do the same thing," a reference to the 2023 attacks. These statements come from politicians who are either in office or seeking cabinet seats. Palestinian political analyst Ahmed Najar points out that these are not "scattered remarks" from marginal figures, but clear signals from politicians seeking to win votes, depicting Palestinians as "not a people who have rights, but a demographic and security problem to be expelled, subjugated or eliminated." He warned that the race in this election has become "who can erase Palestinian existence in the most radical way."

This rightward shift did not emerge overnight. Aran Bergman, a senior lecturer on Israeli security at King's College London, told Al Jazeera that Israel's drift toward the far right began as early as the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and has accelerated sharply since October 7, 2023. He describes the incumbent government as the most right-wing cabinet in Israel's history, saying Netanyahu's "biggest mistake — and one of many" was pulling figures like Ben Gvir and Smotrich into the ruling coalition, "legitimizing these forces as influential players in Israeli politics." According to reports, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has been convicted of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization, is now expected to contend for the defense minister portfolio. Bergman states bluntly, "This is madness, but this is Israel right now."

Meanwhile, Netanyahu's two main rivals for prime minister have invoked in their campaign related reports claiming that Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed had warned in advance of the 2023 attack. Netanyahu has categorically denied this, and the reports have so far failed to produce a significant impact in the polls. Merav Zonszein, an analyst at the International Crisis Group based in Tel Aviv, told Al Jazeera that Israeli voters still broadly view Netanyahu as the "Mr. Security," the key being that they "see no alternative." Even so, Israel's Defense Ministry disclosed earlier this month that since the war started nearly 30,000 soldiers and security personnel have suffered psychological trauma, with the rehabilitation department's budget increasing by 88 percent over three years to 10 billion new shekels, reflecting how wartime fatigue has spread across society.

The expansionist narrative is also being amplified. Al Jazeera analysis points out that Israeli politicians have recently been speaking more openly about the "Greater Israel" concept, a proposition citing Genesis 15:18-21. Israel has for decades disregarded international law, occupying Palestinian and Syrian land and holding more territory inside Syria and Lebanon. Najar warned that this race is presenting Gaza to Israeli voters "not as a disaster or crime that demands it, but as a blueprint that can be replicated elsewhere." The same holds beyond Netanyahu's camp — his main challenger, former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, who leads the Yashar party, is the originator of the "Dahiya doctrine," which centers on using overwhelming force of mass to deter adversaries. In the campaign he has criticized Netanyahu for bowing to U.S. pressure to stop military action against Beirut, and maintains that the Israeli military should be able to strike Hezbollah anywhere in Lebanon.

The deeper consequence of this election lies in the marginalization of the two-state solution. According to data cited by Al Jazeera, since the launch of the Oslo process in 1993, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank has ballooned from about 260,000 to more than 700,000, embedded in the West Bank hinterland that would be needed to constitute a future Palestinian state. Bergman states bluntly that "the two-state idea is irrelevant right now, and is highly likely to remain so for the next decade or longer," and that after October 7 no Israeli leader can present this option to the domestic public. Zonszein adds that "no Zionist party places the two-state solution or a Palestinian political process at the top," and that the public rejection of Palestinian statehood has become "acceptable" within mainstream politics.

The reason this radicalization lacks a brake at the international level is closely tied to limited Western pressure: although Smotrich has been sanctioned by several Western states, his cabinet position and annexation agenda have not been subjected to systemic constraint; even when the United States pressed Netanyahu to halt military action against Beirut, such pressure did not extend to the Gaza war or to the overall trajectory of the election. A Mitvim Institute poll in June this year found that although Israeli voters are deeply concerned about the decline of the country's international standing, they broadly reject resolving the Palestinian issue through a political process, reflecting how a domestic consensus prioritizing security is strong enough to withstand external pressure. Bergman states bluntly that putting the two-state solution back on the agenda would require "substantial international pressure, including harsh sanctions on Israel," but such a prospect is highly unlikely in the current election climate. In other words, when Israel's parties are competing to escalate military action and territorial conquest and using "who is more radical" as the axis of their contest for votes, this election is no longer an accountability moment for the Gaza war, but the institutional entrenchment of its extreme-nationalist logic.