Israel’s enemies, he said on September 29, were plotting an attack on the country before the vote. Without providing any evidence, he then quickly referred to continuing attacks by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip, where he said they had killed more than 100 “terrorists” in recent weeks. That link drawn by Netanyahu – between the genocidal war on Gaza that began after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks, the upcoming elections, and Israel’s national security – was not coincidental, say analysts.
Netanyahu’s insistence that he alone can secure Israelis from a range of threats they face from across the country’s borders, they say, lies at the heart of his re-election campaign, even as his alleged failures during the attack three years ago and in securing the quick release of captives have offered his opponents ammunition. When a Flydubai flight packed with Israeli passengers on their way from Dubai to Tel Aviv a day after his recent warning nearly crashed after a co-pilot attacked his pilot with an axe in the cockpit, Netanyahu was quick to seize on the incident to argue that he is still man for the country’s top job. Polls suggest that he faces a stiff test in what is the first general vote since the 2023 attacks, which led to the killing of 1,139 people in Israel and triggered the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, where Israeli have attacks have since killed more than 74,000 Palestinians.
Three years later, the war has become inseparable from the domestic debate over Israel’s direction while also accelerating a political shift to the right – with once-fringe positions on Palestinians now very much the mainstream view. Few embody this transformation more than Israel’s far-right financial Minister Bezalel Smotrich, sanctioned by a number of Western countries and known for his incendiary and racist language and policies towards Palestinians. In one of his characteristically inflammatory statements, Smotrich told Israeli outlet Ynet late last month that the Israeli army should “go to war” in the occupied West Bank and “do there what we did in Gaza”.
Less than two weeks later, Smotrich’s electoral ally Moshe Feiglin added fuel to the fire. Palestinian political analyst Ahmed Najar said these are not “stray comments” from marginal figures but an electoral message from power-seeking politicians aimed at portraying Palestinians as “not a people with rights, but a demographic and security problem to be expelled, conquered or destroyed”. He added: “The frightening reality is that the coming election risks becoming a competition not over whether Palestinian life should be protected, but over who can promise to erase it most aggressively.” Following October 7, the younger generation in particular slid rightwards, said Ahron Bregman, an Israeli security analyst and senior teaching fellow at King’s College London.
He said the forces driving Israel to the right had been gathering for decades. More recently, the far right has been emboldened through electoral politics as part of Netanyahu’s government since 2022 – the most right-wing government in Israeli history. Another outspoken cabinet member alongside Smotrich is Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right provocateur who has previously been convicted of inciting racism and of supporting a terrorist organisation.
But that’s contemporary Israel,” said Bergman. Analysts also pointed out that several parties running, including ones that are currently in power and a number that are challenging the current coalition, all advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, as one of the examples of the shift to the right. Omar Baddar, director of Palthink for Strategic Studies, said the messaging from across the Israeli political and military spectrum in the lead-up to the election shows that there is “a consensus” to continue the attacks on Gaza, where nearly 1,500 have been killed since a “ceasefire” last year.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
