Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the Hatikva Market in Tel Aviv as part of the Likud party’s election campaign, October 22, 2026. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

50 shades of right: An Israeli election primer

While Netanyahu’s bloc adds more extremists to its ranks, his opponents are impeding their own path to power by refusing to work with Arab parties.
By Ben Reiff
Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh, surrounded by MK Ahmad Tibi and Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen, at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem for a hearing on the Central Elections Committee’s decision to disqualify candidates and parties from running in the upcoming Knesset elections, October 1, 2026. (Oren Ziv)

Israel’s election won’t change the renewed reality of political apartheid

Abu Shehadeh’s disqualification sends a clear message: Jewish-majority state institutions now determine who represents Palestinian citizens.
By Areej Sabbagh-Khoury
Election campaign billboards featuring Yashar party chairman Gadi Eisenkot and Likud party chairman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alongside opposition leaders, displayed on a road in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, October 17, 2026. (Sharon Leibel/Flash90)

Eisenkot is trying to outflank Netanyahu on the right. It’s a failed strategy

The more hawkish the opposition leader is, the harder it is to explain what alternative he offers — and he’s not the first to make that mistake.
By Amos Brison
Finance Minister and Religious Zionist Party chairman Bezalel Smotrich tours the Mahane Yehuda Market as part of the party’s election campaign, in Jerusalem, October 9, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Why Smotrich still defines the horizon of Israeli politics

Israeli liberals have acceded to the maximalist vision of the MK's 2017 ‘Decisive Plan’ — while claiming to oppose ‘messianic’ violence.
By Avi-ram Tzoreff
Leena Dallasheh (courtesy)
PODCAST

What’s at stake for Palestinian citizens in Israel’s election?

Leena Dallasheh discusses the echoes of military rule in today’s crackdown on Palestinian dissent, and the struggle for a more substantive form of citizenship.
By +972 Magazine
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President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Rabbi Bradley Artson, and students from Hand in Hand participate in the Menorah lighting during Hanukkah reception #1 in the Grand Foyer of the White House, Dec. 17, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
How an Israeli and a Palestinian ended up lighting Obama’s menorah
Just weeks after Jerusalem’s Jewish-Arab school was attacked by arsonists, President Obama met with two students to light the Hanukkah menorah. Inbar Shaked Vardi talks about her whirlwind trip to Washington DC, and why she has decided to stay at the school despite the threat of violence. By Inbar Shaked Vardi It all started with…
By +972 Magazine December 27, 2014
Refugee warm up near a fire at the Arin Mirkhan refugee camp, Turkish-Syrian border, October 2014. Photo: Faiz Abu-Rmeleh/Activestills.org
PHOTOS: Kobane refugees dream of home in Turkey’s refugee camps
Though hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled the city of Kobane over the past months, some of them insist on making the dangerous journey home to retrieve what was left behind. Text and photos: Faiz Abu-Rmeleh / Activestills.org Hundreds of thousands of Kurdish and Syrian refugees have fled the city of Kobane in northern…
By Activestills December 27, 2014
Homes in Beit Lahiya lie in ruins after the Israeli bombing of the Rozanah family home, Gaza Strip, August 2, 2014. The homes of five families were destroyed, leaving 60 people homeless. (Anne Paq/Activestills.org)
The 25 most-read posts of 2014
The readers decide — +972 Magazine’s most popular posts of 2014: The largest Palestinian protest in years, a journey to Jordan’s squalid refugee camps, Israel’s very own tunnels of dread in Jerusalem, a sixth grader draws the war in Gaza, why Palestinians support Hamas during wartime and more of the year’s most-read stories and features.…
By +972 Magazine December 26, 2014
A young Bedouin watches as a bullzdozer rented by his family demolishes their own home in the recognized village Sawa, Negev Desert, December 23, 2014. (photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)
Negev Bedouin are now demolishing their own homes out of despair
After losing a lengthy legal battle against the state, residents of the unrecognized Bedouin village Sawa decided that demolishing their own homes is preferable to seeing the authorities do it. By Michal Rotem On Tuesday of last week, the residents of Sawa, an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev Desert, used their own money to…
By +972 Magazine December 26, 2014
Jewish Home party chairman Naftali Bennett (Photo by Activestills.org)
Naftali Bennett’s annexation plan: A report card
Before he was Minister of the Economy, Naftali Bennett was a Knesset hopeful whose plan to annex the majority of the West Bank shook the political establishment. Two years later, it’s worth seeing just how much he has gotten done. By Joel Braunold When Naftali Bennett first entered the coalition, I wrote of his plan…
By +972 Magazine December 25, 2014
The Beaten Path: Tel Aviv’s after hours – a night apart (part 12)
Tel Aviv isn’t a single bubble, but rather a bubble made up of myriad sexual, political and social identities. But between the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll lies a city whose nightlife is also full of homegrown segregation. Part 12 of Yuval Ben-Ami’s journey through the Holy Land’s most popular tourist sites. It was American-Jewish thinker…
By Yuval Ben-Ami December 25, 2014
Screenshot from Danny Danon's anti-Zoabi campaign video.
WATCH: Rightists campaign on hate, incitement and arrogance
Two different election campaign videos released by major right-wing candidates have one major thing in common: they are very clear about what and who they are against, yet indicate next to nothing about what they stand for. In a highly incendiary video, Likud Knesset member Danny Danon, who was fired from his position as deputy defense…
By Mairav Zonszein December 25, 2014
Israeli Border police officers corral Palestinians as they wait to cross from Qalandiya checkpoint outside Ramallah, West Bank, into Jerusalem, July 26, 2013. (Photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)
Israelis know status quo is untenable, but there’s no alternative vision
With three-quarters of Israelis saying they worry about international isolation and only 10 percent supporting the status quo, logic would hold that they might seek change. But don’t expect it to happen anytime soon. The success of the Zionist project — from the pre-state era to Startup Nation — is often attributed to some combination…
By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man December 24, 2014
Raam-Taal MK Ahmad Tibi (L) and Balad MK Jamal Zahalka (Photo by Activestills.org)
+972 poll: Joint Arab list would raise voter participation
The three Arab lists in the Knesset are expected to run together in response to a raised election threshold. Asked about self-identity, the majority consider themselves Arab, but a growing and significant minority call themselves Palestinian. Nearly 70 percent of Arabs citizens of Israel intend to vote if the three existing Arab parties run on…
By Dahlia Scheindlin December 24, 2014
A partly constructed portion of Israel's separation wall, in Walaja, December 7, 2010 (Anne Paq/Activestills.org)
+972 poll: Israelis reject the status quo, fear int’l isolation
Over 70 percent of Israelis are worried about international isolation. Half believe settlements strengthen Israeli security and over half support a breakthrough vision for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – roughly the same rate of support for the traditional two-state paradigm. But one-quarter support an apartheid vision for the future. Half the population supports anchoring Jewish…
By Dahlia Scheindlin December 24, 2014
Most Read
  1. ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
  2. Eisenkot is trying to outflank Netanyahu on the right. It’s a failed strategy
  3. 50 shades of right: An Israeli election primer
  4. Israel's election won't change the renewed reality of political apartheid
  5. Jewish Israelis must do more than stand together with Palestinians
  1. ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
  2. Days away from Israeli elections, a ‘sour mood’ pervades the Haredi street
  3. ‘We’ve paid the price for war. We haven’t yet reaped the fruits of peace’
  4. Jewish Israelis must do more than stand together with Palestinians
  5. Why ‘NAZA’ terrifies Israel's liberal elite
  1. ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
  2. Why ‘NAZA’ terrifies Israel's liberal elite
  3. Debunking Israel’s latest list of ‘terrorist’ journalists in Gaza
  4. ‘The Gaza Holocaust won't be forgotten’: An Israeli musician screams into the void
  5. ‘NAZA’ is forcing Israelis to reflect. But we Palestinians are not your mirror