Israel's Mainstream Parties Vote With Far Right on Palestinian Issues

Israelis will vote on October 27 in their first election since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, a contest widely framed as a judgment on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's tenure. But the parliamentary record suggests the outcome may matter less than it appears. When Al Jazeera examined the ten most consequential Knesset votes on Palestinian issues between July 2024 and March 2026, a pattern emerged that cuts across the conventional left-right divide: Israel's centrist opposition parties have voted alongside Netanyahu's far-right coalition on nearly every major measure affecting Palestinians.

The Israeli political spectrum has undergone a profound rightward shift. What once qualified as fringe ideology—rejecting Palestinian statehood, annexing occupied territory, cutting aid to Palestinian refugees—now commands mainstream consensus among Jewish-led parties. A Palestinian political analyst observed that much of Jewish Israeli politics now operates from assumptions that would have been considered right-wing a generation ago. The shift is visible in public opinion as well. In spring 2023, 35 percent of Israelis told Pew Research that Israel and a Palestinian state could coexist peacefully. By 2026, that figure had fallen to 17 percent, marking the first time a majority of Israelis explicitly rejected the possibility of coexistence.

The Knesset's voting record on Palestinian statehood illustrates the collapse of meaningful opposition. In February 2024, a cabinet statement against unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state passed 99 to 11. Netanyahu's coalition voted in favor, as did the centrist Yesh Atid party and most members of Benny Gantz's National Unity alliance. Labor boycotted the vote. Only the Arab-led parties voted against. Five months later, a resolution declaring a Palestinian state an "existential danger" passed 68 to 9, with National Unity and Yesh Atid again supporting the measure. Before the election, the Jerusalem News Syndicate asked Israeli politicians across the political spectrum whether their parties supported Palestinian statehood. Every politician answered no.

On annexation of the occupied West Bank, the lines blurred further but the outcome remained consistent. In July 2025, a nonbinding declaration calling for annexation passed 71 to 13, with Yesh Atid and National Unity boycotting and Labor joining the Arab-led parties in opposition. When annexation became an actual bill three months later—tabled during a U.S. vice-presidential visit—it passed in preliminary reading by a single vote, 25 to 24. The far-right Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit parties voted for it, as did Yisrael Beiteinu. United Torah Judaism split 4 to 3 in favor. Shas and New Hope were absent. Yesh Atid, Labor, and the Arab-led parties voted against. Likud officially opposed the bill, though one lawmaker, Yuli Edelstein, voted yes. Had the four United Torah Judaism votes gone the other way, the bill would have failed.

The ban on UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, drew the widest support of any binding law examined. UNRWA, established by the UN General Assembly in 1949 after the Nakba—the Arabic term for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948—provides schools, healthcare, food aid, and other services to nearly six million registered Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. In October 2024, the first of two bills barring the agency from operating in territory Israel considers sovereign passed 92 to 10. The second, cutting off all state contact with UNRWA, passed 87 to 9. Both took effect in January 2025, despite warnings from the UN and Western governments that the laws would cripple aid operations.

Netanyahu's coalition, Yisrael Beiteinu, Yesh Atid, and National Unity all voted in favor of the UNRWA ban, as did Labor members present in the chamber. Only the Arab-led parties voted against. The pattern holds across the votes examined: consistent opposition came only from the Arab-led parties and the four-seat Democrats, which together held 14 of the Knesset's 120 seats. The centrist and center-right opposition either voted with the government, boycotted to avoid going on record, or split internally.

The structural reality of Israeli coalition politics helps explain the alignment. No party has ever won an outright majority in the Knesset, so forming a government requires assembling 61 of 120 seats. This gives smaller parties outsized leverage. Netanyahu's current coalition, which held 60 seats when parliament dissolved in July, includes the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, the far-right Religious Zionism alliance, and New Hope. Bezalel Smotrich, head of Religious Zionism, serves as finance minister and controls civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, including settlement planning. Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of Otzma Yehudit, is national security minister in charge of police. Both have used the threat of quitting to shape policy.

The October 27 election may change who sits in the prime minister's office, but the parliamentary arithmetic on Palestinian issues appears unlikely to shift. The Israeli electorate itself has moved rightward, and the opposition parties have demonstrated they will vote with the government on the measures that matter most to the far-right coalition members. The consensus that has emerged across most of the Jewish-led Knesset—against Palestinian statehood, for annexation, for cutting aid—reflects not a temporary political moment but a hardened public position that any incoming government will inherit.