Thursday, October 29, 2026
From Ian:
Bret Stephens: Very Little Is Likely to Change after Israeli Election
Bret Stephens: Very Little Is Likely to Change after Israeli Election
The first thing to say about Tuesday's election in Israel is that the country is having one. Competitive, lawful, on schedule. That's more than can be said of the Palestinian Authority under the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term in 2005 but has bypassed elections ever since. It's more than can be said for Hamas, which won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, went to war against its domestic political opponents, and has ruled through fiat and fear ever since.After Oct. 7, Israelis Were Forced to Choose between Two Bad Options
It's difficult to take Israel's inveterate critics seriously when they demand a "Free Palestine" without registering the slightest audible objection to the tyrannies in Ramallah and Gaza; or when, in the name of freedom and equality, they seek to abolish the Middle East's only functioning liberal democracy.
For an election widely billed as the most important in the country's history, very little is likely to change, at least as far as the outside world is concerned. Not one of the leading contenders wants a Palestinian state. Not one of them is going to remove Israelis from the West Bank or issue a blanket ban on settlement construction. Not one of them wants anything less than an assertive military posture toward Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran.
Of the many intellectually flabby critiques of Israeli policy since Oct. 7, the idea that Israel should have traded its physical security for the sake of some added dollops of liberal pity is among the flabbiest. Israel doesn't exist to showcase Jewish victimization. It exists to end it.
At stake is whether a people who have borne the burden of Hamas's terror and Iran's missiles and a nonstop state of emergency and the unceasing chorus of global condemnation that is one part ignorance, two parts bigotry and three parts self-delusion should have a government worthy of their sacrifice, steadiness and courage.
Politicians on the left and right in the U.S. these days often seem more focused on Israel, its treatment of the Palestinians, and its policies in the Middle East than on the usual local concerns, like the number of children in a classroom or unemployment. This preoccupation is a puzzle to many Israelis.Israelis Are Broadly United on Attitude to Country's Enemies
Do Israelis really not care what the world thinks about them? No. They care a lot. But what concerns them even more is what their enemies think. Israelis want the Western world to love them but their enemies in the Middle East to fear them.
In the days after the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas, most Western countries displayed a deep empathy for Israel. But the coin had another side. Hamas's invasion and the slaughter signaled to the neighborhood that Israel had lost power. Western love moved Israelis, but their enemies' dissipation of fear aroused existential anxiety.
Three years later, the successes of the Israeli Army rehabilitated the army's deterrent power in the Middle East. The trouble is that the actions that restored Israel's image in the region have severely damaged its image in the West. Any restraint that Israel might have shown to maintain Western sympathy would have prevented it from restoring the fear felt by its enemies. And everything it did to establish fear eroded sympathy. The catch is that it can't have both.
After Oct. 7, Israelis were forced to choose between two bad options. Going to war against a terrorist army requires ground operations amid a civilian population - a blueprint for large-scale death and devastation. But not going to war would have left Hamas with the ability to repeat the massacre, signaled to Israel's enemies that it had lost the ability to defend itself, and stripped Israelis of confidence that they could continue building a future in their own country.
There is broad agreement in Israel: the war and its justifiability are not topics of public debate in the current election. Israel was required to choose bad over worse but judged as if it had chosen bad over good.
Despite the inconclusive result of Israel's general election, it remains highly unlikely that replacing Netanyahu with Eisenkot would have any profound impact on the many security challenges facing the wider Middle East. When it comes to issues surrounding Israel's security, there is little to distinguish between the two main contenders for the premiership in terms of their uncompromising approach to defeating Israel's many foes.
Eisenkot, 66, the former head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who served in Netanyahu's war cabinet after the Oct. 7 attacks, is just as much a hawk as Netanyahu when it comes to defending Israelis from the many regional threats they face. He shares Netanyahu's view that Israel must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons at all costs, and that it is vital to disrupt and degrade Tehran's terrorist infrastructure throughout the Middle East.
Following the national trauma of Oct. 7, it is a prerequisite for almost all Israeli voters that whoever leads their country regards the defense of the Jewish homeland as their number-one priority. So far as the wider Middle East is concerned, the next Israeli government will be equally robust when confronting its many foes.
Israel will continue to target any attempt by Iran to reconstitute its nuclear program, the majority of which has been reduced to rubble. Likewise, Israel will continue to press for the complete disarmament of Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and will maintain its efforts to disrupt the activities of Hizbullah and other Iranian-backed terror groups in the region.
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