Lula's victory alone cannot loosen the US and Israeli grip on Latin America

Jodor Jalit

1 November 2026

Brazil's president has defied Trump and condemned the genocide in Gaza, but a divided electorate and powerful right-wing neighbours limit hopes of a regional shift

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/lulas-victory-alone-cannot-loosen-us-and-israeli-grip-latin-america

“Lula won! Lula won!" a Brazilian student shouted at a language school in Cairo. An Argentine activist sent a similar message. A pan-Arab news channel filled the screen with images of packed streets in Sao Paulo.

The excitement over Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's fourth term is real, and it is shared by his supporters at home and by progressives across neighbouring countries. It is also exaggerated, especially when paired with hopes of a regional swing to the left and a distancing from the US and Israel.

Argentina, the homeland of exaggeration, offers a quick example.

After Alberto Fernandez defeated incumbent Mauricio Macri in 2019, a jubilant Peronist movement began imagining a regional realignment.

A Trotskyist activist from the southern suburbs of Buenos Aires captured the mood: "We already have AMLO [Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador] in Mexico, and now we must go for Brazil. Can you imagine Lula being re-elected? Latin America would be leftist once again!"

The optimism was understandable. Lula walked out of prison two weeks after the Argentine vote, and a candidate endorsed by US President Donald Trump had lost for the first time.

Fernandez took office in December 2019 and did not live up to the hype. A month later, he made his first foreign trip as president to Israel, a gesture that one seasoned Argentine-Israeli foreign policy analyst read as a bid for Washington's goodwill ahead of talks over a $44bn debt to the International Monetary Fund.

Fernandez had also inherited a hostile neighbourhood. Jair Bolsonaro had taken office in Brasilia in January 2019, and Jeanine Anez took power in La Paz that November, consolidating the region's conservative Blue Tide.

Most importantly, Trump had entered the White House in January 2017 with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. That September, Benjamin Netanyahu became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to visit Latin America, touring Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, and returned for Bolsonaro's inauguration.

Fernandez's victory, in short, did not deliver the realignment the optimists had imagined. In the little time he had before the Covid-19 pandemic, he used Israel to draw closer to the US.

This is not to say that Lula will follow in his footsteps. It is to point out the limits that domestic, regional and global politics impose, and to moderate expectations accordingly.

A divided electorate

Lula's latest victory is no small feat. He is the first democratically elected president of Brazil to win a third and now a fourth term, and the first since 1985 to win a runoff after finishing second in the first round.

Laudable as they are, these achievements reveal how hard his party has found it to renew its leadership, and not for want of trying.

The Workers' Party (PT) made its first attempt at renewal in 2010, electing Dilma Rousseff to succeed Lula as president. She was re-elected in 2014, impeached in 2016 and failed to win a Senate seat in 2018. Her return looks all the more distant now that she presides over the New Development Bank, established by Brics.

The party then passed the baton to Fernando Haddad, who became its presidential candidate in 2018 after the electoral court barred the imprisoned Lula from running. Haddad lost to Bolsonaro.

Lula returned as the PT's candidate to defeat Bolsonaro in 2022 and, four years later, Bolsonaro's son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro. In both cases the margins were razor thin: less than two percentage points the first time, under four the second.

Three days before the final vote, Datafolha had the two candidates tied at 50 percent of valid votes. More telling still were the rejection rates: 46 percent for Flavio Bolsonaro and 45 percent for Lula. These figures reveal the frustration and polarisation behind Lula's victory.

The polarisation is written on the map, too, along the historical divide between the wealthy south and the poor north. Flavio Bolsonaro swept the three southern states, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and the centre-west, while Lula took all nine states of the northeast. Compared with 2022, only two states changed hands.

Lula's victory leaves the PT's succession problem unresolved and Brazil's electorate deeply divided, while offering little evidence of the wider leftward shift his supporters hope to see across Latin America. Trump's second term is a reminder of what entrenched leaders and polarised electorates can do to a democracy.

The reactionary international

Lula's victory is the exception in Latin America: it follows a wave of right-wing election wins across the continent since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. The right has won elections in Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Peru and Ecuador.

The Argentine scholar Juan Gabriel Tokatlian has described the rise of a "reactionary international": an Anglo-Saxon invention with peripheral franchises, driven by anger at history, politics and morality, and always in search of a scapegoat.

Trump, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage have found their matches in Jair Bolsonaro, Argentine President Javier Milei and Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella.

This network of populist, socially conservative and economically liberal leaders has revitalised relations between Latin America and the US.

Trump endorsed presidential candidates Nasry Asfura in Honduras and de la Espriella in Colombia, as well as Flavio Bolsonaro, and embraced presidents Jose Antonio Kast of Chile, Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador.

Before Argentina's midterm elections in October 2025, the Trump administration arranged a $20bn lifeline to prop up the peso and Milei's coalition. In September 2026, it diverted $52m in military aid from Iraq, Tunisia and two Nato members to right-wing governments in Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Peru.

Indeed, the Trump administration has invested heavily in the reactionary international, above all in Latin America. Such meddling, electoral and financial, is itself a trait of the network: a cross-border solidarity that tramples on state sovereignty and international law.

Most worrying is the "Donroe Doctrine", Trump's message that all means necessary will be used to support and propagate the network across Latin America.

In its name, US forces have been bombing boats in the Caribbean since September 2025, killing more than 100 people in extrajudicial strikes. In January, they kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from Caracas, killing 100 soldiers in the raid. Since February, they have enforced a fuel blockade on Cuba that UN experts have called "energy starvation".

Washington wants to dominate the hemisphere and lead its wing of the reactionary international by political, economic and military means. Governments in the region now face rising, and sometimes deadly, costs for refusing to yield to US demands.

Lula has already defied Trump, with results and bruises to show for it. When Trump hit Brazil with 50-percent tariffs in 2025 to punish it for prosecuting Jair Bolsonaro, Lula refused to bend. The US Supreme Court struck down those emergency tariffs in February, only for Washington to replace them with a 25-percent duty in July.

Lula took the case to the World Trade Organization, and within a month Trump called Lula and bilateral talks resumed.

Impressive, yes. Cost-free, no. Lula has been unable to return US tariffs to their previous rates and has been forced to find new markets.

Israel's foothold

If Lula has struggled to hold his ground against Washington, progressive forces elsewhere in the region have fared worse, unable to push back against the Blue Tide and the reactionary international. That failure keeps the door open for Israel's continued presence in Latin America.

Relations between Latin America and Israel have had their ups and downs, reflecting the wider mood of international politics. Diplomatic missions opened in the 1950s. In the decade that followed, the abduction of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in 1960 and the spread of leftist governments created friction.

Even so, when the UN General Assembly declared Zionism a form of racism in 1975, most governments in Latin America and the Caribbean voted against the resolution or abstained. Only Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Guyana and Grenada supported it.

At the same time, Israel was finding customers. From the 1970s, it armed some of the region's most brutal regimes, among them Argentina's military junta, Augusto Pinochet's Chile, El Salvador's death-squad governments and Anastasio Somoza's Nicaragua.

The progressive Pink Tide of the 2000s then tried to strike a balance. One after another, countries from Brazil to Honduras recognised the state of Palestine in 2010 and 2011, and a growing number of leaders criticised Israel's conduct during its 2009 and 2014 wars on Gaza. In 2014, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and El Salvador recalled their ambassadors.

Then came Trump, elected as the Pink Tide receded, followed by Netanyahu's tour. Guatemala moved its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 and Honduras did the same in 2021. In 2019 and 2020, Argentina, Paraguay, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia declared Hezbollah a terrorist organisation at Washington's urging. In 2019, Jair Bolsonaro and Chile's then-president, Sebastian Pinera, both visited Israel.

Underpinning all of this, once again, are arms sales and surveillance technology. Argentina has bought Israeli gunboats, Colombia an air defence system and Mexico the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware. Flavio Bolsonaro campaigned on a promise to move Brazil's embassy to Jerusalem, and Netanyahu addressed his campaign launch by video.

Lula's limits

Lula may be prepared to stand up to Israel and the US. He has shown as much by confronting Trump over tariffs, withdrawing Brazil's ambassador from Tel Aviv, calling Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, a genocide, and joining South Africa's case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

He is nearly alone in Latin America in being both willing and able to do so. Israel knows that commercial ties keep the door to political influence open, especially while Trump sits in the White House.

The excitement over Lula's win as a victory for democratic and progressive values is justified, even as his party struggles to renew its leadership.

The expectation that it will set off a regional domino effect, reviving the progressive movement and distancing the region from Washington and Tel Aviv, is not. Lula alone cannot roll back US and Israeli influence in the region.

Not all is bad news. Argentina's 2027 presidential election offers Lula a chance to recruit an ally, and when Brasilia and Buenos Aires align, the region moves.

Tel Aviv fears US will abandon war on Iran before Israeli goals are met: Report

Israeli planners are concerned that a 'quick campaign' by US forces will leave the Iranian government 'intact'

News Desk

OCT 30, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/tel-aviv-fears-us-will-abandon-war-on-iran-before-israeli-goals-are-met-report

Israel’s military leadership fears that a swift US bombing campaign on Iran after next week’s midterms could leave the Iranian government “intact” and fail to achieve Israeli war goals, Haaretz reported on 30 October.

Israeli officials are concerned that US President Donald Trump could then strike a deal with Tehran following the strikes, leaving Iran more determined than ever to bolster its defenses, as it has in the last two rounds of attacks. 

The warning exposes a widening rift between Tel Aviv and Washington over what a renewed war on Iran should achieve. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the collapse of the Iranian government and the complete destruction of its nuclear program his war aims, while Washington seeks nuclear concessions and guaranteed passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Officers in Israeli military intelligence and the air force doubt that several days of US airstrikes could force the Iranian government’s surrender, let alone its collapse.

With the two previous rounds of joint US-Israeli attacks failing to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites or cripple its government, Israeli intelligence assessments warn that new strikes could at most delay it, as Tehran has reinforced its sensitive facilities and remains able to rebuild infrastructure and replenish defenses

Commanders warned the cabinet that joining a campaign without agreed goals could see Washington walk away once its own terms are met, leaving Tel Aviv trapped in an open-ended war with mounting costs.

Israeli defense officials also concede that the Iranian government can withstand the toll of war and the maritime blockade for at least another two years, outlasting the current US administration without abandoning its core objectives.

Israeli military planners admit that rallying public support for another war will be difficult after the recent parliamentary elections, warning that an inconclusive campaign could further erode trust in an army still struggling to recover from the failures of 7 October.

Israeli defense officials have repeatedly been stunned by how quickly Iran rebuilt its ballistic missile production after each US-Israeli bombing campaign since 2024, with Tehran’s arsenal nearly doubling to 2,500 missiles between the June 2025 war and February 2026.

Having withstood more than 20,000 US and Israeli strikes, Iran retains an arsenal of hundreds to thousands of missiles and the ability to seal the Strait of Hormuz and has used the lull in fighting to rebuild its stocks and fortify its defenses.

Tehran has repeatedly warned that any renewed aggression would trigger a forceful response against economic and civilian targets across the region.

How Ben Gvir and Smotrich helped drive historic Arab voter turnout

Israel’s far right brought national politics into every Arab home. On election day, Palestinian citizens proved that fear and despair need not mean silence.

By Baker Zoub October 28, 2026

https://www.972mag.com/israel-election-far-right-palestinian-voter-turnout/

For weeks, polls have been predicting a surge in Arab voter turnout compared to previous Israeli elections, perhaps reaching as high as 70 percent. Yesterday’s results blew those predictions out of the water, with early estimates suggesting turnout was around 80 percent — the highest among Palestinian citizens of Israel in decades, and above the national average.

With final votes still being counted, the two Arab parties — the Joint List and the United Arab List (Ra’am) — are projected to achieve a combined 18–19 out of the Knesset’s 120 seats, surpassing their previous record of 15 in 2020. In every sense, yesterday was a historic day for Palestinian politics in Israel.

Exit polls and expert analyses were not necessary to prove it. You only had to stand outside polling stations in Arab communities, as I did all day, and remember what the same places had looked like during previous elections.

This was the ninth election that I have voted in, and the eighth that I have covered as a journalist. But I have never seen anything like what I saw yesterday. 

The signs had been there even earlier. In past elections, when I asked people in the weeks leading up to election day whether they planned to vote, I would usually hear some version of the same response: “There’s no one to vote for,” “They’ve all disappointed us,” or “What difference will it make? The state will do whatever it wants anyway.” Sometimes someone would spend 10 minutes explaining why they didn’t believe in elections, and by the end I still would not know whether they planned to stay home on election day.

This time, that discussion was almost entirely absent. “Of course I’m voting” was the response I heard over and over again.

In Nazareth, this sentiment was especially striking. I visit the city almost every election day, and in recent elections the feeling of alienation from national politics was palpable in the streets. In the previous election, turnout barely reached 48 percent. Since then, the city has gone through crisis after crisis, all of which have contributed to a deep sense of disgust with politics and politicians.

Yesterday, however, I saw women over 90 arriving at polling stations. I don’t know what they thought about the Arab parties and their internal disagreements, but they had clearly decided that this time, there was no way they were staying home. Scenes like these can tell you more about an election than a database full of numbers.

There was another fact mobilizing high turnout in some of these communities. Local ties are a powerful force in Arab society. That is why turnout in local elections is usually much higher than in Knesset elections: People know the candidates and their families, and the mayor or council head has a direct impact on their lives.

But yesterday, something interesting happened: The Knesset election began to feel like a local race. 

In Iksal, the presence of Ahmad Darawshe, a young man from the village, in eighth place in the Joint List, gave people another reason to vote. In Umm Al-Fahm, Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen had a similar effect. 

As I traveled around, I realized this was happening in many places. In my own village of Kafr Misr, a small community where national elections are usually not a major event. This time, however, people came to the polling booth in large numbers and eagerly discussed who they should vote for. Things that usually felt distant — the government, the coalition, and the Knesset — suddenly felt very close to home.

Bringing national politics to every home

Everyone who worked in recent months to increase turnout in Arab communities deserves credit: the candidates, local activists, and campaign organizers. They reached out to people, made phone calls, were active on social media, and worked on the ground. But voter outreach alone cannot explain the shift from years of apathy to turnout approaching 80 percent.

In my view, the two people who did the most to make this election a local event were far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

In Arab society, for better or worse, we tend to take things personally. For years, you could tell people that the right wing needed to be defeated, but that was rarely enough to get them to vote. People could be angry with the government, curse at the news on television, and still stay home on election day. Ben Gvir and Smotrich changed that. Their actions brought national politics into almost every Arab home.

Over the past four years, violent crime has devastated our communities, and many feel the state has abandoned us to face it alone. Home demolitions are no longer an abstract political issue. Smotrich’s rhetoric about “Judaizing” the Galilee and the Naqab (Negev) concerns the land on which hundreds of thousands of us live. 

Incitement against Arabs has become routine; for some ministers in the outgoing government, it is an integral part of their political identity, something they present to voters as proof that they are doing their jobs.

Ben Gvir and Smotrich continued their attacks even on election day. As the high turnout in Arab communities became clear, Smotrich stopped his campaign tour and called an emergency meeting. Ben Gvir went to the entrance of Kafr Qasim to warn his supporters about the “insane turnout rates” among Arabs.

For years, Palestinian citizens have been treated as dangerous simply for demanding land, security, equality, or the right to speak out about atrocities done to our people. On election day, even our decision to exercise the most basic democratic right was presented as a threat.

That incitement has continued today, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party claiming — without any evidence or basis — that the election was “stolen by Arab parties.”

Two months ago, when Smotrich posted an AI-generated campaign video presenting his Judaization plans as terrifying Palestinian citizens, he accompanied it with the sentence: “Ahmed has reason to be afraid.” More than the explicit threat, what struck me was the way this was brandished as an achievement. Smotrich was not trying to reassure Arab citizens that his policies would not harm them; he was telling his voters that Arab citizens are afraid of him, and angling for more votes because of it.

Ultimately, when someone openly boasts about harming you, at least you no longer have to wonder whether to take the threat seriously. Ahmed may have reason to be afraid, but he also has the right to vote. Yesterday, that is exactly what he did.

From alienation to determination

There is something paradoxical about this historic result. Recent years have not brought Arab society closer to the Israeli state; they have pushed it further away. The genocide in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, the incitement against us, restrictions on our ability to even speak about what our people are going through, and the crime and insecurity in our communities have all weakened trust in state institutions and the political system.

And yet, precisely from that sense of alienation people went out to vote in their masses.

In reality, there is no contradiction here. You do not have to believe in a political system to use the tools it gives you. You can doubt that another government will solve your problems, be unhappy with the Arab leadership, and feel that neither the state nor the world cares much about your safety and future. And still, you can look at Ben Gvir and Smotrich and decide that you will not stay home while they ask for another four years in power.

Perhaps that is the biggest difference between yesterday’s election and others in recent years that felt, at the time, to have been historic in their own way. Back then, people were mobilized largely by hope: the unity of the Joint List, the possibility of greater Arab representation, and the sense that something new might happen. There was hope yesterday too, but what I felt most strongly was determination. People were not necessarily convinced that anyone on the ballot would improve their lives. They knew what they did not want to continue.

There will be time to examine the choice between the Joint List and Ra’am, which party gained more, and what voters were trying to tell each of them. But the most important thing is that people showed up.

For years, we have talked about the breakdown of Arab society, about how crime and despair have turned a community with a shared sense of destiny into groups focused on their own survival. Yesterday, for one day, I saw something different. 

We will continue to argue about national identity and political partnership, about the Knesset and the limits of working within it. But hundreds of thousands of people decided that, despite those disagreements, we are all facing this existential battle together.

Ben Gvir and Smotrich wanted Arabs to be frightened, weakened, and desperate enough to stay home. Yesterday, they discovered that fear and despair do not always lead to silence.

Arab Joint List extends hand to Eisenkot’s bloc to oust Netanyahu gov’t

October 28, 2026

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20261028-arab-joint-list-extends-hand-to-eisenkots-bloc-to-oust-netanyahu-govt/

Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of Israel’s Knesset and head of the predominantly Arab Joint List parliamentary bloc, said the bloc was extending its hand to the “change bloc” to oust the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Anadolu reports.

The “change bloc” is an opposition alliance seeking to replace Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government. It includes former military chief Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Yair Golan’s Democrats, Naftali Bennett’s Beyachad, and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu.

The “massive turnout among Arab citizens is a historic achievement for the Joint List, which answered the public’s call for unity and proved that it is a decisive force without which change is impossible,” Tibi said in a written statement received by Anadolu.

“We extend our hands toward the ‘change bloc’ to oust the Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir government — which will begin with the removal of Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana,” he added.

According to a video released by his office, Tibi told Joint List supporters at a rally in the town of Tayibe in central Israel early Wednesday that their voices were “the loudest” despite attempts to “cut the electricity at polling stations and tried to obstruct voting.”

“Ben Gvir, the criminal, will not be police minister. His day has come,” he added.

Netanyahu’s bloc was projected to win 54 seats in the 120-member Knesset, seven short of a governing majority, with 84.5% of votes counted in Israel’s parliamentary elections, according to Israeli media.

The opposition bloc led by Eisenkot was projected to secure 49 seats, while predominantly Arab parties were projected to win 17 seats, according to The Times of Israel newspaper, citing the Central Elections Committee.

The predominantly Arab Joint List was projected to win 11 seats, while the United Arab List (Ra’am) was expected to secure six.

Israel’s Ben-Gvir blasts Netanyahu over reported US-backed plan to form government without him

October 27, 2026

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20261027-israels-ben-gvir-blasts-netanyahu-over-reported-us-backed-plan-to-form-government-without-him/

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of planning to form a US-backed government that excludes him, Anadolu reports.

In a post on the US social media platform X, Ben-Gvir said Netanyahu had “promised the US administration that, following the election, he would form a unity government with Gadi Eisenkot — and without Ben-Gvir.”

His remarks came after newspaper Israel Hayom reported that US President Donald Trump is pushing for a unity government involving Netanyahu and his main challenger Eisenkot, with the Israeli premier reportedly signaling in closed-door talks that he would be willing to abandon his far-right allies to advance the Abraham Accords to normalize ties with Arab countries, including with Saudi Arabia.

The elections are Israel’s first general polls since the start of its genocidal war in the Gaza Strip in October 2023.

For his part, Netanyahu called Ben-Gvir’s comments an “election trick” to mobilize voters.

“How many times are you going to keep repeating this trick?” he wrote on X.

Netanyahu, who has headed the current government since late 2022, is on trial on corruption charges, including bribery, fraud and breach of trust. If convicted, he could face imprisonment.

​​​​​​​He also faces an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the war in Gaza that killed more than 74,000 people and injured over 175,000 others.

Iran warns of ‘unimaginable’ response to US aggression as tensions rise over Hormuz

Iran's parliament speaker says Tehran will not surrender to military threats, while foreign minister warns Hormuz will be managed differently after the conflict

MEE staff

Published date: 25 October 2026

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-warns-unimaginable-response-us-aggression-tensions-rise-over-hormuz

Iran has issued a warning to the United States that any new act of militarism would lead to an "unimaginable" response, with parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf saying that Iran would not back down if attacked.

Addressing parliament, Qalibaf said the Iranian government would not be intimidated by US military threats or pressure and would defend what it considers the country’s territorial integrity.

“Americans think that with a few levers of media pressure or military threats, they can make this great nation surrender to them,” he said, according to a report by Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

“Unaware that today's Iran is not the Iran of the Pahlavi era of humiliation, but rather an impregnable fortress of self-confidence, defensive strength and iron will,” he added.

Qalibaf said Iran was prepared to respond forcefully to any violation of its territory and insisted that threats of a wider war would not compel the country to abandon its interests.

“Until the Americans change their behaviour, stop being coercive and greedy, and compensate their violated obligations in an objective, concrete and real way on the ground, no claim for the Islamic Republic of Iran will have an iota of credibility,” Qalibaf said.

Qalibaf said Washington had placed itself in a tough spot due to its decisions to attack Iran.

The warning came a day after US President Donald Trump said Washington could strike Iran as soon as Sunday or reach a “big, beautiful” agreement with Tehran, as tensions rise over the future of the Strait of Hormuz.

On Sunday, Iran’s army said that its air defence systems had shot down a US LUCAS drone over Bandar Abbas, a port city in southern Iran near the Strait of Hormuz. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the war with the US and Israel means the security situation in the region has completely changed and that the management of the strait would not return to its previous state.

“The current war has changed everything. We must acknowledge that new realities have emerged,” Araghchi said in remarks reported by Anadolu Agency, citing Iran’s Press TV.

“The shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz will no longer be the same as before, nor will the strait be managed as it was in the past,” he added.

Araghchi said Tehran would welcome security arrangements developed by countries in the region rather than imposed by outside powers.

The waterway, between Iran and Oman, is one of the most important in the world. It connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. Its security is crucial to international energy shipments.

Iran and the US remain at odds over how the strait should be managed following the conflict. Tehran has asserted its authority over passage through the waterway, while Washington has called for unrestricted navigation.

However, although there was an interim deal signed between the two nations in June to solve the conflict, diplomatic negotiations have since stalled amid renewed tensions.

Israel’s right fights over who gets to rule the Jewish state

The promise of ‘unity’ leaves Palestinians facing the same state project – regardless of who becomes prime minister.

Mohammad al-Ayoubi

OCT 20, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/israels-right-fights-over-who-gets-to-rule-the-jewish-state

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his principal challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, are competing for the authority to govern a state whose Jewish identity neither contest (27 October election). Their camps remain short of a parliamentary majority. Yet the political deadlock is already prompting discussion of arrangements both sides had presented to voters as unacceptable.

Recent polls put the prime minister’s bloc and the Zionist opposition close to a tie, with neither securing the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-member Knesset. Another election remains possible, especially while opposition leaders reject governing partnerships with Palestinian parties. 

The struggle over who can assemble a coalition is sharpening a more fundamental competition: who can best defend Jewish security and administer the Jewish state.

Understanding that contest requires looking at the transformation of Israeli society, Suleiman Bisharat, director of the Yabous Center, tells The Cradle. 

That shift toward the right took hold roughly a decade ago, rather than emerging only during the past two or three years. The electorate has continued moving toward the right and far right, narrowing the political ground on which the main contenders compete.

For Bisharat, the claim that Netanyahu represents the right while Eisenkot stands outside misreads this transformation. Netanyahu represents the far right or extreme right; Eisenkot also belongs to the right and far right. Their rivalry concerns who can take a harder line on Jewish identity and the principles underpinning the state.

The right competes with itself

The campaign revolves around the identity of the state, enshrined in the 2018 Nation-State Law, and its religious-national character. These questions concern the future organization of a Jewish religious nation-state, including the relationship between its military, religious institutions, and political leadership.

Bisharat argues that Netanyahu and Eisenkot are competing to make their respective right-wing visions more convincing to far-right parties. Netanyahu brought extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir into his governing coalition after the previous election and is trying to work with the same electoral logic again. The two candidates’ rhetoric, despite their rivalry, remains within the same ideological orbit.

Dr Saad Nimr, a political science professor at Birzeit University, offers a similar assessment. These elections pit the right against the right, he tells The Cradle, with both contenders operating within the right and far right. He sees little substantive disagreement over the nature of the state: both invoke a Jewish and democratic nation-state.

Their dispute centers on its management. Eisenkot regards Netanyahu as an overbearing leader with whom he cannot work, Nimr says. But both pursue broadly the same direction and share the same general ideas.

Opposition to Netanyahu has brought together politicians whose disagreements over coalition partners exceed their differences over the state they seek to govern.

Netanyahu bargains for survival

Netanyahu enters the election under legal and political pressure, while remaining the dominant figure in his camp. His campaign turns the vote into a referendum on national security and the Jewish identity of the state, presenting him as the indispensable guarantor of both. His emphasis on the multi-front “War of Redemption” also serves to minimize his responsibility for the intelligence failures exposed by Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Appealing to his religious and nationalist base, Netanyahu uses the unfinished war to deflect scrutiny of his corruption trial and responsibility for 7 October, casting his removal as a threat to the state’s security and Jewish identity.

At the same time, Netanyahu has begun putting distance between himself and Ben Gvir. Likud signed a surplus-vote agreement with Religious Zionism, leaving Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power outside that arrangement. Netanyahu has also said Likud would retain the defense, national security, and justice portfolios, rejecting Ben Gvir’s ministerial demands.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar has gone further, publicly proposing a rotation government with Eisenkot, with Netanyahu serving first. President Isaac Herzog has also pledged to work to prevent another election. These signals leave open the possibility that Netanyahu’s pressure on Ben Gvir serves a second purpose: making room for an agreement with Eisenkot after the vote.

Nimr says Netanyahu may dispense with Ben Gvir if a broader political arrangement offers a better route to power. Much will depend on Likud’s seat count. With divisions running through the prospective coalitions, Netanyahu will calculate how many partners he needs and what he must concede to secure them.

If his bloc falls short, he will try to gather the necessary votes despite his partners’ conditions, including those of the religious parties. Nimr argues that Netanyahu’s overriding objective is a government he heads, even when the price conflicts with the preferences of his own party.

Eisenkot’s security alternative

Eisenkot has emerged as Netanyahu’s strongest challenger. A 16 October Maariv poll put him ahead on suitability for the premiership, with 48 percent support to Netanyahu’s 41 percent, and projected his Yashar party to win 21 seats against Likud’s 18. Other surveys differ in their margins, but repeatedly leave both camps without a governing majority.

Drawing on his tenure as military chief of staff between 2015 and 2019, Eisenkot presents himself as the candidate of security and unity. His program includes a state commission of inquiry into the October failures, a new national security doctrine, and a comprehensive service law covering Haredim and Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. For the Palestinians, the proposed obligation includes national civilian service, rather than universal military enlistment.

His alternative remains firmly within the state’s Zionist framework. He has made recognition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, adherence to the Declaration of Independence, and acceptance of service obligations conditions for coalition partners. He has excluded Palestinian parties on that basis.

Netanyahu and Eisenkot agree on preserving the Jewish state and its security doctrine. They disagree over who should lead it, which parties should share power, and who must serve in its armed forces. 

The Haredi price of power

Shas and United Torah Judaism, polling at roughly 14–16 seats between them, sit at the sharpest point of disagreement. They remain central to Netanyahu’s coalition calculations, while their opposition to compulsory military service clashes with Eisenkot’s platform. 

Their parliamentary weight makes any settlement over conscription inseparable from negotiations over the next government. Netanyahu has repeatedly sought to shield their constituency from the draft to preserve their support.

The legal basis for blanket Haredi exemptions was struck down in 2024. By October 2026, Israeli reporting put the total number of people classified as evading military service at around 110,000, approximately 80 percent of them Haredim. 

The widening pool of draft evaders has made the religious parties’ exemptions increasingly difficult to separate from the burdens imposed on serving soldiers and reservists.

In July, military chief Eyal Zamir opposed legislation suspending arrests and enforcement against Haredi draft evaders, warning that it would encourage noncompliance amid personnel shortages. 

The law sought seven months of protection for yeshiva students. The courts subsequently struck it down, but enforcement remained stalled, allowing Netanyahu’s religious partners to retain much of the protection they sought.

Bisharat locates the dispute within a society organized around security and the perception of existential danger. Eisenkot demands a more equal distribution of security duties, while Netanyahu treats the Haredim as the “spoiled child,” granting their demands without requiring equivalent military participation. Conscription will consequently be one of the principal bargaining issues after the election.

Nimr says Eisenkot’s insistence on Haredi military service has been clear from the outset, as has the religious parties’ rejection of it. Netanyahu, meanwhile, seeks compromises, including recruiting only 30 percent into noncombat roles. The question is how much the religious parties would accept without abandoning the exemptions their leadership has defended for decades.

If both contenders reject broad exemptions, the Haredi parties will face a difficult choice. They prefer participation in government because it secures budgets for their religious schools and institutions. 

A Netanyahu offer that falls short of full conscription could therefore keep them within his camp, even after a campaign marked by disputes over their privileges.

A unity government for the Jewish state

The deadlock has revived discussion of a Netanyahu–Eisenkot unity government. In the 16 October Maariv survey, 55 percent favored unity over another election if the vote produced no decisive result.

Avigdor Lieberman has accused Eisenkot of preparing to rescue Netanyahu again through an arrangement involving Likud and the Haredim. His attacks reflect the fear that the opposition’s campaign to remove Netanyahu could end with its strongest candidate entering a government alongside him. Lieberman has explicitly ruled out joining a Netanyahu-led coalition.

Israel Hayom has reported a proposal for a broad government tied to Washington’s regional plans. Under the reported arrangement, Netanyahu would remain for up to two years to conclude wars and pursue agreements with regional states before retiring. Eisenkot could claim the removal of Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an October inquiry, and a halt to the judicial overhaul.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has met Eisenkot and other political contenders – but he publicly denied that Washington was pushing the reported unity arrangement. 

Under such an arrangement, Netanyahu would retain the premiership, oversee the next stage of regional negotiations, and claim that his political course had prevailed even after surrendering some of his current allies.

Israel’s political history offers a precedent for bitter electoral rivals sharing power. After the 1984 election, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir formed a national unity government with a rotating premiership, despite the hostility between their camps. 

The absence of comparable personal animosity between Netanyahu and Eisenkot could make an agreement conceivable if both consider the alternatives worse. Netanyahu could sell the bargain as securing another term in power; Eisenkot could claim credit for removing the ministers most closely associated with the government’s excesses.

Nimr remains skeptical. Each presents himself as the leader and resists serving beneath the other. A pact would also threaten Eisenkot’s relationships with opposition partners such as Lieberman. 

Even if preserving the Jewish state under perceived existential threat brought the two together, disputes over leadership and coalition terms could quickly undermine the arrangement.

A two-year rotation is conceivable in Nimr’s assessment, but Netanyahu would insist on serving first. Eisenkot has, for his part, publicly rejected rotation and called for one prime minister to serve a full term. Netanyahu’s demand to go first would require Eisenkot to abandon that position before taking office.

Bisharat stresses that the electoral map remains unsettled. Turnout among Palestinian citizens in the territories occupied in 1948 could make it harder for Netanyahu to assemble a majority; lower participation would give him greater room. 

Haredi turnout and the fate of smaller lists will also matter. The decisive contest begins after the vote, when the parties must turn their seats into bargaining power and decide which campaign commitments they are prepared to trade for office.

Palestinians face the same project

Replacing the prime minister would leave the foundations of the state intact. Netanyahu depends on religious and nationalist allies, while Eisenkot offers military authority and more orderly administration. 

A broad unity government could redistribute power among them while preserving the same commitments to Jewish statehood and Israeli security. Excluding the most overtly extremist ministers would allow its architects to advertise a political break while leaving the state’s relationship with Palestinians largely untouched.

Bisharat expects no fundamental transformation in the state’s nature or principles. The right dominates, and its principal contenders compete over who can defend those principles more forcefully. Their confrontation may rearrange the coalition without opening a political alternative for Palestinians.

Nimr similarly argues that the occupying state’s approach to Palestine will endure regardless of the winner. The coalition may change its ministers and its public language, but the electorate is being asked to choose between rival custodians of the same state. 

He identifies rejection of Palestinian statehood, claims to the whole Land of Israel, and ethnic cleansing as continuities in that project. For Palestinians, a change of leadership offers little prospect of ending dispossession and military domination.

An Eisenkot government would have to reconcile its service promises with the demands of any Haredi partners. A Netanyahu victory would renew bargaining with the religious and nationalist right. 

In either case, the state remains bound to the same formula: Jewish and democratic, with its leaders fighting over the boundaries of those terms while Palestinians remain subject to the power both camps seek to wield.