The End of the Netanyahu Era? Why Israel is at a Turning Point

[00:00:00] It's almost time for one of the most consequential elections of 2026, and I am not talking about the U.S. midterms, instead talking about the Israeli elections happening tomorrow. Now, tomorrow, for the first time since October 7th, 2023, Israel is voting in national elections. Now, Netanyahu, the current prime minister, has dominated Israeli politics for over 20 years right now, and tomorrow is looking like it might possibly be the end of an era for him.

[00:00:24] Now, we're recording this a day before the vote, and Israel laws ban new polls of elections a few days running up to the vote, so everything that we're talking about right now comes from numbers that were last published on Friday. Now, we're going to go over how the Israeli election system actually works. It's different than the one that we have here at home.

[00:01:07] Now, Israel's Knesset, which is like their version of parliament, has 120 seats in it, so to win an outright majority, your party needs to have a vote. Now, in the three final televised polls that were published in Israel on Friday, you have from Khan, Channel 12, and Channel 13, no party right now has 61 votes.

[00:01:27] Now, Essinkat's opposition bloc, which is the number one opposition bloc to the current Likud party headed by Netanyahu, has somewhere between 52 and 56 votes, and Netanyahu's current government coalition sits right around the 50 mark on all three polls. Now, the gap there gets filled in by the Arab parties in Israel, which roughly in the polls have between 14 and 16 seats right now, and hold on to that because that's where the whole story of this election is going to go.

[00:01:55] Now, caveat, this is polling data. It is a few days old, and one aggregator of the last 10 polls did actually end up getting Netanyahu's bloc ahead of the opposition by two seats on average, so it's not looking good, but it's still tight. Quick note on the mechanics. It's a parliamentary system where you have a national poll with all the parties on it, and people vote for whatever party they want. Now, in order to earn seats at the Knesset, your party needs to at least get three and a quarter percentage points of the Israeli popular vote.

[00:02:25] So when it comes to the numerous small parties that end up right around that three and a quarter percentage point, every single one of them that either does or does not end up getting seats in the Knesset allocated to it can have massive implications when it comes time to form a final coalition government. Now, seats are split proportionally after the vote amongst all those parties that get at least three and a quarter percentage points. The president consults the party leaders and hands the mandate to whoever is most likely to assemble 61 seats. Now, that could just be because your party has enough votes to have 61 seats to Knesset,

[00:02:54] or because your party has enough allies with other folks to get you to that number as part of a coalition. Once the president picks the party that's going to have the shot at making a coalition, that party then gets a couple of weeks to actually build it and put it together. If they don't, they hit the reset button and we do this again. Keynote here, Eisenkot, the leader of the main opposition bloc right now, can get the most votes. He can get the most seats. He can be ahead in the polls and still not be able to form a governing coalition.

[00:03:22] And Netanyahu is the ultimate political survival, so you can't count them out until it's done and dusted. And it's also important when you're looking at this, we're not just watching who's ahead in the polls, who gets the most votes, it's which bloc as a total is getting the most seats in the Knesset, because that's the bloc that'll be invited to form the next government. So the players in this year's election, we've got Benjamin Netanyahu in the Likud party. Still one of the top two party blocs, and they're anchored by a far-right religious coalition.

[00:03:48] The main opposition, Eskadi Esenkat and his Yashir party, he's the former IDF chief of staff, came out of nowhere to lead most of the polls. And his platform is that he wants a professional government military service for everyone, including the ultra-Orthodox, who's our main coalition supporter of Netanyahu, and his state commission of inquiry into October 7th. His military background and the loss of his son in Gaza are part of his public appeal on security.

[00:04:14] Then you have Benet and Lapid, which are two former prime ministers that got together in April to launch their own party. You got Yair Galan's Democrats, which is a left party, and Liebermans. Liebermans, you get a bunch of other mid-range parties that are both lining up with time, either of the two lead contenders, Netanyahu and Esenkat. But then we also have a block of Arab-majority parties in Israel as well. Now, right now, Esenkat is winning, but it's the block numbers that tell the tale. Now, this is Channel 12's final poll, published Friday.

[00:04:42] And Khan and Channel 13, two other news outlets in Israel, their poll numbers do tell the same story. Esenkat Yashir is the first in line at 23 seats likely to be assigned to Knesset based on current vote totals. Likud is second at 21, Benet-Lapid at 15. All three networks had Yashir on top, 22 to 23 seats, with Likud at 19 to 21. Very close. Now, look at the color, not the length. Blue is Netanyahu's block, which altogether brings him to 50 seats.

[00:05:11] Teal is the Zionist opposition at 56. Notice both are still short of the 61 seats you need to have an outright majority. And then you have the Arab-majority parties together at 14 seats total. So do the math. 56 and 50 are both not 61. And right now, neither block can get there without doing something that they have publicly said they would never do and crossing a line saying that they would never cross. So two things to watch in tomorrow's election are, one, do we have any smaller parties in Israel that aren't currently on the board

[00:05:40] actually get across that three and a quarter percentage point mark, getting them a couple seats, moving this math around, and creating new possibilities for coalition building that could get someone to 60 or 61 votes? Additionally, what's the actual turnout for the Arab parties? Do they see any buy-in in this election? Neither one of the two main blocks right now has said that they're willing to bring Arabs into their coalition. So are they even going to show up and vote if they're not going to have a voice in government? Regardless of which one of the last three polls that we saw on Friday that we looked at, we reached the same conclusion.

[00:06:10] Somebody's got to shift blocks or the Arab parties need to pick a side. And for them to pick a side, what can they get in return? Now, why is this even a thing? Benjamin Netanyahu has been, you know, in charge of Israeli politics for 20-some odd years now. You know, why is he in trouble? Well, his whole brand has been Mr. Security. He's the guy that can keep Israel safe in a world full of scary neighbors. He's the guy that can keep Israel safe in a world full of scary neighbors.

[00:06:36] Like, he was already very unpopular due to corruption scandals and trying to pack the Supreme Court. And then October 7th happened. And the one thing you got with Netanyahu, his brand, was security. And then Israel suffered, like, its worst attack in a generation. Not a good look. Not a good look. Then there's been the recent revelations that he was warned by other countries that this attack was happening, and he did nothing about it. And no one's been held accountable.

[00:07:05] Now, that's before you add in the war in Gaza, which has turned into a genocide, the mishandling of the hostage crisis, the international isolation. You know, he had this major trump card where, like, if we get America to start a war with Iran, we'll have a rally around the flag effect, and I'll be the big boss who got the American military to go take out the Iranian regime that we're so afraid of. That hasn't worked, and that was his last trump card, no pun intended.

[00:07:30] So it's been looking really bad for him, and it seems like he's running out of cards to play. Though anyone who's been around that long, you can't think he doesn't have something else up his sleeve. We'll see what he pulls out. And he's in quite a bit of a pickle with his own party. You know, we talked about his main opposition, former IDF chair. So one of his main points, and a big sticking point in Israeli society, is that there is this war in Gaza. They've been calling up the reserves.

[00:08:00] They've got mandatory military service in Israel. But the ultra-Orthodox right Jews who study the Torah full-time, they're exempt from military service because their study of the religious text is considered so important. So you have a massive group of young men in Israel who are exempt from the fighting, and they are a massive part of Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition.

[00:08:27] And the rest of Israeli society really doesn't like that. And Benjamin Netanyahu can also hold together his current coalition and address the problem of all these young men who are ineligible for the draft because of their ultra-Orthodox religious views. It's a problem. So he's in a bit of a pickle there. And polling has shown that since the start of the Iran war, his popularity has gone down in Israel from 40 to 34%. Not good. Though, of course, this is a parliamentary system, so he doesn't actually need to be that popular

[00:08:57] as long as he has a solid base of support in order to form a coalition government. We'll see how it shakes out. Now, this puts the Arab parties in a bit of a unique position. They can actually play kingmakers here. Now, Arab citizens are about a fifth of Israel's population. Their parties are pulling 14 to 16 seats in the Knesset combined right now. And that's exactly the size of the gap that we would need to overcome to make a coalition government. Let's talk about the lineup here. There are four Arab parties in Israel of note, three of which are currently running together on a joint ticket, one of which used to be a part of it. They broke off.

[00:09:27] It's a thing moving past that. So how are Arab voters in Israel feeling right now? Well, a MAV survey from the Moshe Dan Center put expected turnout at 53%, which is about the same as we saw in 2022. Now, if all four Arab parties had united and stay united through this entire election cycle, turnout was projected to be at a record 67%, which gets them those 16 seats. Right now, we've got three parties together, one party split. And this is a hypothetical for May, not an election need forecast,

[00:09:54] but it showed there is untapped potential in the Arab parties right now. Now, 77% of Arab citizens say that they want an Arab party in the next coalition. They don't want to be on the outside. They want to get on the inside. And there's a couple of reasons why. You know, they're pretty angry at the moment. There's real anger about what's been going on in Gaza, about a crime wave in Arab towns that they view Israeli security forces as turning a blind eye to and not addressing. We have dozens of Arab Israelis were murdered in the first months of this year,

[00:10:23] with very little done to prosecute the offenders. And the governing coalition tried to get the Arab parties disqualified from running. They almost got kicked out of the political party entirely. That got squashed by the courts, the same courts that Benjamin Netanyahu was previously in hot water over trying to pack. So there's a lot of political awakening in the Arab population in Israel right now. Now, here's the twist. The Arab parties could absolutely put either coalition bloc over the edge right now.

[00:10:53] But the leaders of both blocs have said that they refused to work with the Arab parties. Esenkat, leader of the main opposition bloc to Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a September 26 Channel 12 interview that no Arab party would accept his conditions, including recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. Several other smaller coalition bloc members have said they are only willing to work with Zionist parties. So that kind of rules out the Arabs. The only party that's expressed any interest in working with the Arabs is Yair Golan's Democrats, the far-left party.

[00:11:22] And that was just kind of like, hey, yeah, I mean, sure, if we get the votes, we'll talk. Not really promising anything. And this feeds into Netanyahu's current election strategy, which is to brand any opposition government as dependent on the Muslim Brotherhood. Because why not? Saying that in order to replace his government, they need to get the Arabs involved. So it's illegitimate. It would lead to the downfall of the state of Israel. Well, it's fear-mongering, but hey, the guy's an expert at it. So right now, the Arab parties can mostly affect the election by blocking.

[00:11:52] Higher Arab turnout means they get more of a cut of the Knesset, and they can block any coalition from getting to the 60 seats necessary. And that just triggers another round after round after round of attempting to form a government. So the open question after the vote is, does Essendon hold the line if the only path that 61 votes runs through one or more of the Arab parties, the way Bennett and LePay did in 2021? He has pledged to expand the coalition rather than go through another election.

[00:12:22] So is he willing to partner with an Arab party to get into power if it prevents another election cycle? We'll see. And if he brings in an Arab party in, does that cost him anyone in the current coalition? He might be willing to lose the support of one of his smaller coalition members if it means getting the whole Arab block behind him. Of course, that assumes that Netanyahu doesn't then take those people onto his coalition and get to the 61 votes. It's a tricky math game, but the more Arabs that show up and vote and the stronger their cut of the Knesset,

[00:12:50] the more leverage they have if no government is able to be formed immediately. So how does this impact the Palestinians? Well, some concepts first. As of October 24th, Gaza's health ministry reports more than 74,500 Palestinians killed since October 2023 and more than 1,500 since the October 25 ceasefire. Those are reported deaths not only civilians, it includes fighters in there as well. United Nations reporting also documents continued killing during the ceasefire. Now look at the right side.

[00:13:18] None of the leading candidates is committed to a Palestinian state. It's not on the table anywhere. Only Golan's Democrats call it a distance goal. Now Netanyahu, we got no Palestinian state, period. Actually trying to remove them all from the Gaza Strip right now. And we're seeing a whole bunch of flare-ups in the West Bank too. Isenkaat rejects the fully sovereign Palestinian state, though some analysts have described his openness to limited autonomy under Israeli security control, whatever that's supposed to mean.

[00:13:46] He wants Hamas eliminated as a military and governing force, but would rather do it diplomatically with Washington and the Arab partners. So a softer version of controlling the Palestinians? Bennett opposes a state under any circumstances and actually supports the continued development of territories that would destroy the future territorial integrity of a Palestinian state by increased Jewish settlements. Whether they differ mostly is in tone and in Gaza's end state.

[00:14:14] Bennett says Israel should state plainly it won't annex Gaza or settle it, and that's not nothing. From the Arab party's perspective, the Palestinians are probably still stuck either way. But a government that needs or tolerates Arab votes is better than one built with Ben Gavir and Smotrovich. So some Arab voters may see a different coalition as better even without a breakthrough on statehood. Now when it comes to Iran, don't expect a new Iran policy from a new prime minister. So the U.S. and Israel opened the war with strikes on Iran on February 28th.

[00:14:43] A Pakistan-brokered U.S.-Iran ceasefire came in April, which nearly two-thirds of Israelis opposed, though only 39% wanted to resume attacks. The U.S.-Iran memorandum collapsed in July. Fighting flared again at the end of August, and on September 5th, the U.S. struck three Iranian oil takers after its ships were targeted. This month, Trump has threatened new strikes, and Israel officials have left renewed strikes on the table. We even saw Benjamin Netanyahu send aircraft near the Iranian border, ostensibly in an attempt to trigger Iran into attacking Israeli planes,

[00:15:12] so that he had an excuse to launch a new offensive against Iran. Now there are some differences here. You know, Esenka has criticized U.S.-mediated deals that restrict Israel's freedom of action, so wanting coordination with Washington isn't the same thing as deferring to it. Esenka was also the IDF chief. Bennett is more hawkish than Netanyahu on several issues. Nobody in the opposition is running a detente with Tehran. Nobody's trying to become friends here. Now the Polish Institute of International Affairs put it well. Government and opposition largely agree

[00:15:42] on the strategic goals and reject outside criticism of how Israel fights. So there's some technique differences here, but the overall approach of trying to be in a war with Iran and destroy their nuclear program, seek the collapse of the state and all that stuff, they're all in agreement that's still the goal here. It's just how exactly can we best go about doing it? Now what could change from all this is the relationship with Washington around Iran, who Israel coordinates with and how much it defers to the U.S. negotiating track.

[00:16:10] I mean, they're not deferring much to it at all right now, but hey, who knows what could happen in the future? Now that brings us to this. For two years now, prominent American politicians, including leading Democrats, have drawn a line between Netanyahu and Israel. Chuck Schumer said that Netanyahu had lost his way and called for new Israeli elections in response to what we're seeing going on in Gaza and the heavy-handed tactics used there. Now, to be clear, those heavy-handed tactics have been described by the United Nations

[00:16:39] Independent International Commission of Inquiry as a genocide, which they published last September. And the majority of the international community at this point has reached the position that what's going on in Gaza is a genocide. If the opposition party, led by Essenkant, takes over and the policy on occupation in Gaza and the way that the IDF is conducting operations there continues, and their approach is to Palestinian statehood, continues, and every indication we have from their own statements right now

[00:17:07] is that it will, then that excuse goes away. U.S. politicians will have to argue about Israeli policy itself and about U.S. support for it. You can't just blame one person when that one person is no longer in power. And to continue to support those same policies with someone else in power will be tasked to support of the policies themselves. There's a lot of folks that would like to treat what's going on in Gaza as just an aberration driven by Netanyahu and his hard right-wing coalition in Israel.

[00:17:37] And then, you know, once they're out of power, everything about U.S. and Israel relationships can go back to normal. That implies that the normal we would go back to would look very differently for the Palestinian community than what it looks like right now. We'll see. Now, to be fair to the other side, a new government could make meaningful changes that would have a positive impact in Gaza. Bennett says Israel should rule out annexing the Gaza Strip or settling Gaza. S.N.C. wants an October 7th inquiry and actually hold people accountable who make critical errors, allowing that attack to happen and have some introspection

[00:18:06] about what was going on that get things to that point and work with Washington and other Arab states. Those are real differences. But on the core question of occupation and statehood, the Netanyahu is the problem and once he's gone, all this will get sorted out, doesn't survive the new face delivering the same answer. So what are we watching for going into tomorrow's elections? Well, Arab turnout is a big thing. If it stays around 20, 22, 53% number, Netanyahu does have a chance of maintaining his coalition.

[00:18:36] The higher it goes, the harder his path to a majority, though it isn't a one-for-one trade in seats directly. Now, the threshold. There are two small parties, the Reservist Party, and I'm going to butcher this name, the Amcha Yisrael Party, which are both currently hovering near 3.25%. You know, a party that just misses that number wastes all of its votes. Both parties getting that, though, do create new blocks of votes that could meaningfully shift the coalition numbers around. Now, block totals are more important than who finishes first.

[00:19:04] Just because the opposition comes out ahead does not mean they're going to be in a position to form a final coalition government. And then defections. You know, Netanyahu is very good at breaking off little pieces there and there of other people's coalition governments. And you can always watch for switching from Lieberman and watch whether Shah starts hinting it could work with Isenkatt. And patience. After results, the president consults the parties. The coalition talks can run for weeks. A true deadlock means Israel could be heading into another election. That's happened five times

[00:19:34] in four years before. So to recap, nobody's at 61. Isenkatt camp is ahead. Netanyahu is pretty damn close. And the Arab majority parties might have an opportunity to play kingmaker, which wouldn't fix things overnight for the Palestinians, but certainly doesn't seem like it can make it any worse. If Netanyahu does lose, it ends an era in Israeli politics and it's a massive story. But for the Palestinians, a new government looks a lot like the old government until proven otherwise. Now, the thing that does change in Washington

[00:20:02] is that the Netanyahu is a problem excuse goes away. You can't blame a guy who's no longer in power when the country he leads follows the same or very similar policies. We'll see how American politicians try to address that, though honestly, it'll probably be swallowed up in the noise of the American midterms. And the results will be coming in by the time many of you watch this. Tell me in the comments, you know, what you think happens. Where do you think this coalition government is going? We'll follow up once a coalition starts to take shape. Thanks for watching At the Water's Edge. Like, subscribe, and share with someone

[00:20:30] who needs to be following this. Take care, y'all.