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
Family members of Abdel Rahman Al-Shaludi, a Palestinian who drove his car into passengers at a rail station causing the death of two Israelis last month in Jerusalem, inspect his destroyed apartment in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan, November, 19, 2014. The previous night, Israeli army and police destroyed the apartment of Al-Shaludi, as the Israeli government ordered the demolition of homes of Palestinians who carry out attacks against Israelis. (photo: Activestills.org)
Rights groups to Israel’s top court: Home demolitions are collective punishment
Within the legal community, Israel’s High Court and the state attorneys are isolated and alone in thinking that home demolitions are an acceptable practice, the petitioners argue. No date is set for a decision in the case. Demolishing the homes of suspected — or convicted — Palestinian terrorists amounts to collective punishment that in some…
By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man December 3, 2014
Israeli soldiers smile as they arrest a Palestinian man in Hebron. The army has put the city under closure while it searches for three kidnapped teenagers. (photo: Activestills.org)
Occupation: The missing context in Matti Friedman’s ‘inside story’
For several months now, a former Associated Press reporter in Jerusalem has been on a mission to ‘expose’ the media’s bias against Israel. Glaringly missing from his argument, however, is the occupation. By Daniel Reisel Following this summer’s bloody campaign in Gaza, former AP journalist Matti Friedman has dedicated himself to a series of media analysis…
By +972 Magazine December 3, 2014
African asylum seekers jailed in Holot detention center protest behind the prison's fence, as other asylum seekers take part in a protest outside the facility, in Israel's southern Negev desert, February 17, 2014.
Lapid and Livni’s last act should be to shut down Holot
Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni have one last chance to leave a positive legacy: make sure Israel doesn’t continue the administrative detention of African asylum seekers who have committed no crime. There is little doubt that Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni will be the biggest losers of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire them…
By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man December 2, 2014
Netanyahu (Yotam Ronen / Activestills)
Netanyahu fires Lapid and Livni, calls for early elections
Flash polls show Likud and Naftali Bennett’s ‘Jewish Home’ parties as the biggest winners in new elections. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for early elections after firing Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni Tuesday evening. The decision to dismantle the current governing coalition comes amid clashes in the cabinet over a number…
By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man December 2, 2014
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking in front of Israeli flags, July 20, 2014. (Photo by Haim Zach / GPO)
Israel’s elections: A referendum on Netanyahu
The coalition is falling apart, and the Knesset is likely to agree on early elections soon. Current polls suggest we are heading toward a fourth Netanyahu government, which will be even more right wing than the current one. Netanyahu’s third government has reached its end. New elections, which seemed likely when the Gaza war ended,…
By Noam Sheizaf December 2, 2014
Binyamin Netanyahu and Yair Lapid (Photo: IsraeliinUSA/CC BY 2.0, Activestills.org)
Top 10 reasons Israel should be going to early elections
From bombs dropped on innocent children in Gaza to the increasing gap between rich and poor, there are many good reasons why the current government needs to go. 1. Israel is going to early elections, but not because this government went on an unnecessary adventure in Gaza killing 500 innocent children only a few months…
By Ami Kaufman December 2, 2014
Illustrative photo of a man wearing an Israeli flag at the Western Wall. (By Shutterstock.com / Robert Hoetink)
Does Israel have a place in Jewish identity?
The proposed ‘Nation-State Law’ and a wave of violence point to the urgency of questioning Israel’s place in Jewish identity. Shlomo Sand’s latest book, ‘How I Stopped Being a Jew,’ offers a starting point for such a discussion. When I left Palestine this summer, I was relieved to leave the Israeli flag behind. No more…
By Mya Guarnieri Jaradat December 1, 2014
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announcing the cease fire between Israel and Hamas (photo: Koby Gidon/ Government Press Office)
Like school arsonists, Netanyahu rejects Arab-Jewish coexistence
The prime minister’s reaction — or lack thereof — to the arson attack against Jerusalem’s bilingual school reflects what can only be understood as contempt for Palestinian-Israeli partnership.  The arsonists who set fire to the Arab-Jewish bilingual school in Jerusalem Saturday night decided to pile up the first graders’ books and burn them in the…
By Mairav Zonszein December 1, 2014
A Palestinian child with ash on his face sits in one of the newly established camps with metal caravan shelters for displaced people in the village of Khuza’a, eastern Gaza Strip, November 9, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)
Photos of the month: Jerusalem ignites while Gaza still smolders
As violence increased in Jerusalem, residents of war-torn Gaza continued struggling to survive and cope with slow reconstruction and approaching winter weather. These and other images in our month in photos, November 2014.                                            …
By Activestills December 1, 2014
A teacher inspects the damage from an arson attack that targeted first-grade classrooms at a Jewish-Arab school near the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa in southern Jerusalem, November 30, 2014. Spray painted on the walls were racist slogans in Hebrew reading: "Death to Arabs" and "There's no coexistence with cancer". (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Why is Jewish violence always a reaction to Palestinian violence?
The arson attack against the bilingual school in Jerusalem was committed within a broader political framework: it is an extension of institutionalized violence and ought to be traced back to incitement by right-wing Israeli politicians preaching for blind patriotism and hatred of the ‘other.’ By Fady Khoury After every act of violence perpetrated by Palestinians…
By +972 Magazine November 30, 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. Israel's election won't change the renewed reality of political apartheid
  4. 50 shades of right: An Israeli election primer
  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