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
Latest
The 2014 “Local Testimony” competition. (Activestills.org)
‘Activestills’ photographers featured in ‘Local Testimony’ competition
Photojournalism exhibition opens in Tel Aviv. Works by Tali Mayer, Yotam Ronen and Oren Ziv of Activestills are among those being featured for their work in 2014. Photographers from the Activestills collective, partners of +972 Magazine, Yotam Ronen, Tali Mayer and Oren Ziv are among the winners of the 2014 “Local Testimony” photojournalism competition. The…
By +972 Magazine December 17, 2014
Palestinian farmers harvest olives in Salem village, near Nablus, West Bank, October 9, 2014. Palestinian farmers who have groves behind the Israeli by-pass road are allowed to enter their lands twice a year: during olive harvest season and for tilling soil in April. This year, Salem villagers were allowed to work for five days only. (Photo by Ahmad Al-Bazz/Activestills.org)
WATCH: Olive harvest marred by arson, vandalism and violence
Palestinian farmers from the West Bank village of Yasuf are forbidden from accessing their olive groves for much of the year. When they are given access during the olive harvest, they often find their trees cut down or burned by settlers. But even when they turn to police, the vast majority of their complaints lead…
By Social TV December 16, 2014
Still shot from Yuval Orr's film 'Khalil Helwa'
WATCH: A heartbreaking portrait of life in Hebron, in 9 minutes
By Moriel Rothman-Zecher What does life under occupation look like for a teenage Palestinian? A new, powerful short film by filmmaker and activist Yuval Orr attempts to show exactly that, by following 15-year-old Awni Abu Shamsiya as he attempts to maintain some shred of normalcy in his hometown of Hebron. Hebron, where the occupation is in…
By +972 Magazine December 16, 2014
Illustrative photo of an Egged bus (Photo by Kw0/CC 3.0)
The wave of Jerusalem attacks Israelis don’t hear about
One hundred Palestinian bus drivers in the capital have quit their jobs because of such violence from Jewish racists. If you’d asked me how many East Jerusalem Palestinian bus drivers in the capital had quit their jobs because of the violence they’d faced from Jewish assailants, I’d have said oh, maybe three. When I read…
By Larry Derfner December 16, 2014
Daoud Al-Ghoul, shown near properties taken over by Israel settlers in Jerusalem's Old City. (photo: Activestills.org)
Three Palestinian activists exiled from Jerusalem for five months
Without explanation, three Jerusalemite Palestinians are given five-month bans from the city of their birth and residence. One is banned from the West Bank as well. Text and photos by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org In early December, three Jerusalem-born Palestinians received orders from Israeli authorities banning them from the city for a period of five months.…
By Activestills December 15, 2014
Tear gas being fired into the yard of a high school in the Palestinian village of Burin, December 15, 2014. (Photo by Zakaria Sadah/Rabbis for Human Rights)
IDF soldiers fire tear gas at West Bank school
Dozens of students suffer from tear gas inhalation; army claims stone-throwing youth fled into the school. Israeli soldiers fired large quantities of tear gas into the yard of a high school in the Palestinian village of Burin, near Nablus on Monday. According to Rabbis for Human Rights, the incident took place during the morning roll…
By Haggai Matar December 15, 2014
A sign marks the entrance to Birobidjan. (Photo by Yakov Rabkin)
A land without a people?: A visit to Russia’s Jewish autonomous region
A visit to Birobidzhan, where Jewish autonomy hasn’t exactly worked out — and yet, the sign for Lenin Street is still written in Yiddish and public monuments commemorate Sholem Aleichem. By Yakov Rabkin Last summer, after three months of teaching in Japan, I decided to return home to Montreal via Birobidzhan, in Russia’s Far East. The Jewish Autonomous…
By +972 Magazine December 15, 2014
The son of refugees from Salameh stands outside the village mosque. Today Salameh is known as 'Kfar Shalem' and is part of Tel Aviv. (photo: Eléonore Merza)
From Gaza to Salameh: A Palestinian refugee’s journey home
A Palestinian refugee from Gaza journey’s to his family’s hometown in present-day Tel Aviv. Standing on what used to be the village cemetery, he feels the ghosts of the past as he must reckon with the currently reality. By Eitan Bronstein Aparicio (translated by Charles Kamen) On International Human Rights Day, he took advantage of his…
By +972 Magazine December 14, 2014
Negev Bedouin speak during Zochrot's Public Truth Commission about the expulsion of the Bedouin residents of the Negev during the 1948 war, Be'er Sheva, December 10, 2014. (photo: Ahmad al-Bazz)
‘Truth commission’ uncovers the history of Bedouin dispossession
An informal ‘Public Truth Commission’ set out to find exactly what happened to the Negev Bedouin between 1948 and 1960. While Bedouin witnesses told stories of massacres, rape and expulsions, former Israeli soldiers said they were just following orders.  By Tom Pessah I identify as straight, so I cannot claim to know how it feels…
By +972 Magazine December 14, 2014
A Palestinian girl carries a picture of Nelson Mandela in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. (Activestills)(Activestills)
The day that Mandela Square graces Jerusalem
Like Mandela, we in Israel have fought for our liberation from colonialism. But the world Mandela inspires is far from accepting Israel’s occupation of Palestine. By Ilan Baruch On December 5th, South Africa and the world commemorated the passing away of Neslon Mandela, one of the most illustrious men in the history of modern times. In…
By +972 Magazine December 14, 2014
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  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