Beirut, Lebanon – As Israel’s October 27 election nears, so does the possibility that the government that has overseen the invasion and reoccupation of southern Lebanon could be deposed. But for people in Lebanon, optimism that a change in the Israeli government will bode well for Israel’s neighbours is low. For many in Lebanon, Israel’s history of airspace violations, ground invasions and occupation has led to a general atmosphere of distrust, regardless of who is in charge of the country.
Israel and the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah have been fighting, with different levels of intensity, since October 2023 in the wake of the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel and Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that followed it. Israel has twice escalated the conflict – first in September 2024 and then in March this year, following the start of the United States-Israeli war on Iran. In June, following direct negotations that were rejected by Hezbollah, Israel and the Lebanese government signed a US-brokered framework agreement that included the goal of securing the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.
Still, Israel continues to occupy large parts of its neighbour’s south, where it has systematically demolished homes and infrastructure in dozens of villages, forcing more than one million people from their homes. Lebanese generally disagree on how to deal with Israel, as shown by a June 2026 survey by Lebanese American University professor Jad Melki and his team. In the study, 54 percent of Lebanese polled said they supported diplomacy with Israel, while 35 percent preferred armed resistance.
But the poll also found that regardless of the tactic, Lebanese views of Israel were overwhelmingly negative, with 87 percent of those polled considering it “as their enemy”. In next week’s polls, the primary challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – the man who has overseen Israel’s war on Lebanon that has killed almost 9,000 people since October 2023, including journalists, first responders and children – appears to be Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the Yashar party. Many Israelis see Eisenkot as a break from Netanyahu, who has been inundated with corruption trials, accusations of failure to prevent a Hamas-led attack in October 2023 and of prioritising attacking Gaza over releasing Israeli captives.
But in Lebanon, the general feeling is that whoever replaces Netanyahu is unlikely to deviate from the current policy of occupation and destruction. Eisenkot, in particular, is a former general and chief of staff in the Israeli army with a historical impact on Lebanon. He acted as northern front commander in Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon and is the architect of the Dahiyeh Doctrine, an Israeli military strategy of using disproportionate damage and destruction currently being used by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon.
More recently, he has accused Netanyahu of giving in to US pressure by stopping attacks on Beirut since April, arguing that the Israeli military should attack Hezbollah targets anywhere in Lebanon. Lebanese analysts said that, although Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Gaza, Eisenkot and other challengers have mostly attacked him on domestic issues and from the right, calling him soft on issues of security. He pointed out the governmental and societal backlash to the recent release of NAZA, a documentary made by Israeli journalists in which Israeli soldiers speak about the calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
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