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

A divided Israel is heading towards Tuesday's general election, and at the centre of the contest is once again the same name — Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister who has defined and dominated his country's politics for three decades has put his rivals on the defensive before polling day.

Netanyahu's shadow is clear even at rallies for his lead opposition challenger, former general Gadi Eisenkot. At a gathering in the modest city of Modi'in, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the man looming over the crowd was the absent Netanyahu himself — the man Eisenkot seeks to replace as prime minister.

The name of Eisenkot's party, Yashar, meaning straight or direct, itself carries an implied contrast with Netanyahu. Calls for 'a country without lies', for responsibility and leading by example, and even a suggestion of US-style term limits for prime ministers 'because power corrupts' — in every line, everyone knows who the unspoken target is.

Noa Sadeh, 56, who attended the rally, said she was fed up with people who know how to talk; the country, she said, needs someone who will do the doing part. David Nadler, 74, a retired colonel who served under Eisenkot, insisted on the word 'integrity' — meaning he says something, he means it, he will do it.

The two blocs in this election are not left and right but pro- and anti-Netanyahu. The anti-Netanyahu camp includes figures such as former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Moldova-born Avigdor Lieberman, both natural figures of the nationalist right who once worked closely with Netanyahu, only to fall out with him spectacularly.

Even within the right, every calculation revolves around Netanyahu. Yishai Fleisher, of Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit party, compared Netanyahu to a shopping trolley that tends to go left and must be pulled to the right. His speech demanded more settlements in the West Bank, the death penalty and harsher policies — but all in the context of strengthening a new Netanyahu-led coalition.

The closing weeks of the campaign have centred on one question: whether the anti-Netanyahu bloc of Jewish Israeli parties — forecast to do better than the Netanyahu bloc but to fall short of an overall majority in the Knesset — will do some kind of parliamentary deal with the mainly Arab parties. Backed by loudly pro-Netanyahu media, most notably Channel 14, Netanyahu has succeeded in putting his opponents on the defensive.

His latest poster campaign offers voters a rhyming choice of 'Yamin', meaning the right, or 'Falastin', meaning Palestine. On one side is his own face and the Israeli flag; on the other, opposition leaders surrounding the heads of parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about a fifth of the population. The message is not subtle: vote for me, or you'll get the Arabs.

Amid the campaign, a crude incident drew attention this week when a Netanyahu loyalist, Channel 14's Yinon Magal, characterised Eisenkot as a Moroccan 'monkey'. The racial slur was widely condemned. Tellingly, while warm-up speakers in Modi'in mentioned the remark, Eisenkot himself did not — to admirers, the mark of a decent man; to doubters, a sign of a politician who does not quite appreciate who he is up against.

For outside observers, the most puzzling question is how this race is even close. Netanyahu's government brought devastation upon Gaza, flattening much of the territory and killing more than 70,000 Palestinians, even if, as Israel says, one-third of them were Hamas combatants — yet he remains in contention.

Inside Israel, the riddle is no less sharp. The biggest disaster in the country's history happened on his watch — the massacres of 7 October 2023 at the Nova music festival and a string of southern kibbutzim are still fresh in memory. Oded Levi, who voted for Netanyahu in 2022 but was in the Modi'in crowd for Eisenkot, put it simply: whoever was prime minister then is responsible; he has to go.

All told, Tuesday's vote is not just a contest to choose a government; it is the biggest test yet of the survival of a leader who has stood at the centre of Israeli politics for three decades. Whether Netanyahu can pull off the greatest political trick of his career once more will be answered by the result itself.