Unless there is a major emergency, many of the far-right politicians who have set the tone in Israel for the past four years will put down their phones and log off for Shabbat on Friday evening.
The country’s secular community will keep campaigning to some extent, but might also opt for a moment of rest before the crucial final days until polls open on Tuesday morning.
After a week as frantic as this one, whether anyone can relax at the weekend is a whole other question, even with their phones turned off and with a brief respite from travelling around the country.
There have been massive attacks in the occupied West Bank, which now appears to be under a total lockdown. There are fears of an imminent new round of fighting with Iran. Polls are deadlocked. There have been street brawls between supporters of rival parties. Settlers continue to maraud through the occupied West Bank, threatening the vital Palestinian olive harvest.
That is the tense reality in which Israel finds itself, less than a week before polls open.
On Friday morning, Israel awoke to the news that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the “full closure” of the occupied West Bank after five people were injured in a shooting at a military checkpoint near the city of Hebron.
Palestinian media reports named the attackers as family members Mohammad Jaaba and Firas Jaaba, both 27 and from Hebron. The military said the men had planned to carry out a “large-scale” attack on Israelis. There are a number of illegal Israeli settlements in Hebron.
After the attack, Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who lives in the illegal Hebron settlement of Kiryat Arba, called for the Palestinian Authority to be dismantled. It is supposed to control parts of the West Bank.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, another radical settler, ordered “the immediate demolition of a wide row of illegal Arab structures adjacent to the attack site”.
Israeli defence officials reportedly warned of a surge in settler violence in the occupied West Bank after the elections, as ultranationalists prepare for the possibility that a different government might demolish some of the many illegal settlements that have been established during the tenure of the current government.
Inside Israel, candidates from across the spectrum have been rushing around as polls continue to point to a stalemate. Some of those events turned violent. Michael Illouz, the father of Guy Illouz, an Israeli hostage killed in captivity in Gaza after being abducted in the October 7 attacks, said he was assaulted by supporters of Mr Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening.
“I came to protest against the Prime Minister for abandoning my [son], and shameless citizens with no moral conscience resorted to violence against me,” he said in comments reported by the Israeli outlet Haaretz. “It is a disgrace that a bereaved father is beaten by fellow citizens.”
In Jerusalem, someone threw a glass bottle at Mr Netanyahu’s motorcade after a visit to a market, drawing a swift response from security forces. No one was injured.
Elsewhere, supporters of the Prime Minister attacked a man who heckled him about allowing the transfer of “billions of dollars to Hamas”. Death threats were also sprayed on a billboard showing the leader of the left-wing Zionist party The Democrats, Yair Golan.
Defence Minister Israel Katz was widely criticised for saying that opposition leaders would be responsible for future attacks on Israel.
“Any attack on Israel and all the next terrorist attacks will be attributed to Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett, Yair Golan and their opposition partners,” he said. The statement came as he and the Prime Minister warned that Israel’s enemies might be trying to undermine its elections.
Opposition leaders have been warning of the prospect that Mr Netanyahu would launch a new round of fighting against Iran for political reasons, to remain in power as he struggles to gain momentum in the polls.
