In the weeks after the October 7 attacks, every Israeli expert I spoke to said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not last another six months in office. The crisis was just too big. The man who built the longest career in modern politics on being “Mr Security” oversaw the worst security disaster in Israel’s history.
Almost three years on, he is wrapping up the most successful Israeli government in 50 years. I am not talking about what he did while in office. I am talking about how long he endured. This marks the first election in Israel since 1988 in which the Knesset has completed its full term.
This has taught me two important lessons. First, never underestimate Mr Netanyahu. Second, always underestimate Israel’s opposition.
As Mr Netanyahu does his bit to set the region on fire, his opponents are busy assembling word salads limp and stale enough to give everyone who worries about the Middle East’s current instability yet more sleepless nights.
Just this week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir led thousands of Jewish worshippers to the Al Aqsa Mosque, declaring: “See what's happening here – Jews who are praying, feeling like the owners of the house here.” The man in charge of Israel’s police (who is himself a convicted criminal) is talking about the third-holiest site in Islam.
It is crickets from the opposition. A quick scan on X reveals only angst about an attorney general, draft dodgers and how embarrassing Mr Netanyahu’s coalition is for the country’s allies and its dwindling supporters abroad.
I know there is a perception that it is inconvenient for polling numbers when an Israeli politician talks about Palestinian suffering, as is getting specific about how to solve the conflict in a way that does not involve annexation. And the opposition is in a tough spot when it comes to winning the trust of the electorate after October 7 and fulfilling its patriotic responsibility to navigate the wave of disaffection with Israel across the world, in particular from Jews in the US. This includes people like Rahm Emmanuel, the former Chicago mayor and US presidential hopeful, who told a crowd in Israel earlier in the month that Israel has become a “pariah”.
But reality matters more than trying not to offend right-wing voters. If the opposition cannot find a coherent liberal message now – one that has the guts to risk alienating some people – then there should be little confidence they will after elections. Liberals abroad hoping that the opposition might right itself into a version they want to see should prepare for disappointment.
I cannot stop thinking about a story from February. Yair Lapid, one of Israel’s foremost centrists, was asked whether he supported Israel adopting “biblical borders”. People who support full biblical borders in Israel tend to mean the country controlling Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, parts of Iraq and the Sinai. Mr Lapid, the leader of Israel’s opposition and a former prime minister, fumbled the answer: “I support anything that will allow the Jews [to have] a big, vast, strong land and a safe shelter for us, for our children, and for our children’s children.” When pressed about how large this area should be, he said Israel should be as large as possible “within the limitations of Israeli security and considerations of Israeli policy”.
It is unlikely that Yair Lapid wants Israel to have biblical borders. I think he was asked a question that scared him and made him worry about looking like a liberal coward. Whether he does or does not believe in what he said is not the main point. The point is, if he wants to be the sort of centrist leader that reassures people like Rahm Emmanuel, his reaction to the idea of Israel taking land from Sinai to the Euphrates should look like someone stubbing their toe and biting down on a lemon at the same time.
How much death would a goal like that entail? What sort of lengths would a population of 10 million people have to go to hold that much territory, when its own military is already saying it is at breaking point from its current campaigns?
Israel today is a right-wing society. There has never been less interaction between Israelis and Palestinians. It now feels like I only find truly liberal Israelis when I go looking for them.
If I strike up a conversation with a person in their 20s they will say they want peace. There is also a strong chance they will come out with one of the stock lines of the past few years. Something like the real problem Israel faces is that “we love life, and the other side loves death”.
I have lost count of the amount of times I have heard that line. May all the innocent Palestinians who were killed by Israel in recent years rest in peace. May all the innocent Israelis killed by Palestinians rest in peace, too. I have been to funerals on both sides. No one loved death.
Being here in Israel at the moment is to be yanked from seeing life implode for innocent people in the occupied West Bank, all while knowing it is even worse in Gaza, to being told once you return to Israel that, although things look bad, there is still a glimmer of hope, because thousands of people can still take to the streets because the role of the attorney general is about to be watered down.
If a liberal version of Israel is to survive, it will need more victories than that.
