As a Divided Israel Heads to the Polls, Can Netanyahu Pull Off His Greatest Political Trick Yet?

The crowd in Modi'in, a modest city halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, came to hear Gadi Eisenkot, the former general who leads the opposition challenge in Tuesday's Israeli election. They chant, cheer and clap for him. Yet the figure who looms largest over the evening is absent: Benjamin Netanyahu, the man Eisenkot wants to replace, who has been prime minister for 19 of the past 30 years.

Eisenkot is the son of working-class Moroccan Jews who rose to become chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, and he entered politics only four years ago. His party is called Yashar, meaning straight or direct, a name that carries its own contrast with Netanyahu. He calls for a country without lies, for responsibility and leading by example, and for US-style term limits on the prime minister, because power corrupts. He does it without theatrics, and some voters count that in his favor. Noa Sadeh, 56, said she is fed up with people who know how to talk, like Bibi, and wants someone who will do the doing. David Nadler, 74, a retired colonel who served under Eisenkot, asked that the word integrity be written down.

The two blocs in this election are not really left and right but pro-Bibi and anti-Bibi. The second camp includes former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman, both natural members of the nationalist right who once worked closely with Netanyahu before falling out with him. The far right defines itself the same way. At a study hall in Bet Shemesh, Yishai Fleisher of Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit party told about 30 orthodox voters that Netanyahu is like a shopping trolley that tends to drift left and must be pulled right. His platform included more West Bank settlements, settling Gaza, a ministry of emigration to encourage the voluntary departure of Palestinians, the death penalty, and more guns for Jewish civilians.

Netanyahu also frames the contest itself. His latest posters offer a rhyming choice between Yamin, the right, and Falastin, Palestine. His face and the Israeli flag sit on one side. On the other are the opposition leaders, including Bennett and Lieberman, who firmly oppose a Palestinian state, surrounding two heads of parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, about a fifth of the population. The closing weeks have turned on whether the anti-Netanyahu Jewish parties, forecast to beat his bloc but fall short of a Knesset majority, will strike a deal with the mainly Arab parties, which have historically neither joined governments nor been invited. Backed by loudly pro-Netanyahu media, notably Channel 14, he has kept opponents on the defensive.

One exception came this week, when Channel 14's Yinon Magal called Eisenkot a Moroccan monkey. Warm-up speakers in Modi'in mentioned it; Eisenkot did not. Admirers read that as decency, doubters as a politician who does not grasp what he is up against.

That the race is close is the puzzle. The worst disaster in Israel's history, the 7 October 2023 massacres at the Nova festival and southern kibbutzim, happened on his watch, and stickers of the dead adorn bus stops and railway platforms. Oded Levi, who voted for Netanyahu in 2022 but attended the Eisenkot rally, said whoever was prime minister is responsible and must go. Netanyahu promised to eradicate Hamas and to end Iran's nuclear threat, and neither happened. Israel's international standing has collapsed, and the Gaza war has reportedly killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, a third of them Hamas combatants by Israel's account. Add the judicial overhaul that split the country, the Qatargate allegations against his closest aides, and his ongoing corruption trial.

The explanation starts with a base built over three decades, unmoved even by reports that he received credible warnings before 7 October. He has pushed a narrative blaming army and intelligence chiefs, a claim the author calls baseless, and many expect him to outplay rivals in coalition arithmetic on Wednesday morning.

Opposition energy is visible too. Expat Israelis, many liberal and secular, are flying home to vote, a group pollsters miss, in a race that could turn on a single one of the Knesset's 120 seats. At Thursday's ceremony marking the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Netanyahu stayed away and sent a low-ranking minister. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats and a hero of 7 October, said he is optimistic and hopes opposition leaders can start a regional strategic process. A video of young Israelis singing Shir LaShalom at a Negev festival went viral. What to watch is whether the anti-Netanyahu bloc reaches a majority, and whether it deals with the Arab parties.