Israel's Next Government Likely to Keep Hardline Regional Policy, Analysts Say, With Modest Shifts Possible

Israel's election has produced no clear winner, and as politicians begin the work of assembling a coalition, the reaction from neighboring Arab governments has been muted or absent. Analysts say the silence makes sense. It is not yet clear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will carry on with business as usual or whether a government led by his opponents will take what is expected to be a more moderate domestic course.

Either way, the consensus among experts is that Israel's relations with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf states are unlikely to change dramatically. Nor is policy toward the Palestinians, a subject many Arab publics feel strongly about. Egyptian politician Mostafa Bakry wrote on X that Netanyahu and his main rival, Gadi Eisenkot, are "two sides of the same coin." He wrote after exit polls appeared to show an Eisenkot victory, a result now increasingly contested, and showed Israeli-Arab parties displacing Netanyahu's far-right allies. Arab joy at Netanyahu's near-failure, he argued, does not mean what follows will differ much.

Beth Oppenheim, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, expects an Eisenkot government to be politically fragile, with little room to maneuver. Its biggest differences would be at home: halting the judicial overhaul, opening a state commission of inquiry into October 7, and passing a conscription law. On foreign policy, she wrote, Netanyahu's post-October 7 security doctrine of pre-empting threats, operating far beyond Israel's borders and holding buffer zones in neighboring territory has been embraced by nearly all Jewish Israeli parties.

On the Palestinians, one Likud campaign poster read "The right or Palestine," suggesting that Netanyahu's opponents would open the door to a Palestinian state. Observers call that exaggerated, saying the two-state solution is already dead. Oppenheim notes that, with one exception, all mainstream Jewish parties support or acquiesce in settlements and publicly oppose a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines. In August, Eisenkot himself said no Palestinian state would be established under a government he forms. He would, however, work with left-leaning parties that once backed two states, and a new coalition may need Arab-led parties, now thought to hold around 19 seats. Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group told the Associated Press the best a new government could do is slow the "extremely crazy acceleration" of the past four years.

Still, some changes are plausible. A less extreme government might tone down religious messaging, soften its conditions for disarming Hamas, and move toward the next stage of the Gaza ceasefire agreed in late 2025 but barely implemented. It might also rein in settler violence in the West Bank. Elizabeth Tsurkov of the Middle East Policy Council argued that settler extremism lacks majority support, harms Israel's reputation, and can feasibly be suppressed. Oppenheim cautions that settlements would keep expanding, and that without a diplomatic track, more violence in the West Bank and Gaza is inevitable. Gaza has been devastated, with at least 70,000 Palestinians killed since October 2023.

That war has hardened Saudi Arabia's position: it says normalization requires progress toward Palestinian statehood. Last week the Saudis co-signed a communique with Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt calling Israel "the fundamental source of instability in the region and beyond." Yet there is quiet cooperation, and analysts say a less hardline Israeli government would make it easier for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Egypt to acknowledge their backchannel contacts.

Syria is a possible opening. The Syrian think tank Etana reported last week that Israeli troops have advanced as far as 1,160 kilometers from the disputed border by its measure, occupied Syrian land up to 400 kilometers from it, and carried out 1,996 ground operations in southwest Syria between January and September. Israeli and Syrian diplomats spent months negotiating a US-brokered security agreement, but it collapsed after Israel apparently refused to pull back to the lines set by the 1974 disengagement agreement. Ksenia Svetlova of Chatham House, a former Knesset member, said that before the vote withdrawal would have been seen as defeat. A security deal becomes more probable under a centrist government, she said, though it will take time because such a government would face constant attacks from the extreme right.

In Lebanon, commentators say the government would prefer Eisenkot's bloc. Israel and Lebanon are negotiating an Israeli withdrawal from the south, where Israel claims a buffer zone against Hezbollah and Lebanon says it has been invaded. Eisenkot is widely seen as the originator of the Dahiyeh Doctrine, which targets areas like Beirut's southern suburbs, and whole villages in southern Lebanon are still being razed even as active fighting has subsided. Even so, Lebanese observers see a former army chief as a natural counterpart to President Joseph Aoun, himself a former head of the armed forces. A Lebanese official told L'Orient Today that when Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, now in Eisenkot's camp, ousted Netanyahu in 2021-22, a 2022 maritime agreement was concluded. The Syria and Lebanon talks are where any change would show first.