The main lesson of Israel’s election on Tuesday was that “the October 7 war did not change Israeli society,” said Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn, speaking on a special post-election edition of the Haaretz Podcast.

Despite the turbulence of the past four years, he said, “at the moment of truth, people clung to the tribal loyalties, to the feeling of identity, of belonging” rather than reacting critically to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s many missteps and failures, he explained.

Together with Haaretz senior analyst Esther Solomon and podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Benn analyzed the complicated coalition wrangling that will determine who steers Israel into the future, after a vote in which there was a clear majority of Israeli citizens voting against Netanyahu, but with an opposition divided between Jewish Zionist parties and Arab majority parties. 

Solomon hailed the record turnout in Arab communities, noting that “the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have had an internal debate for many, many years about whether to participate in Israeli politics or not, made a historic decision this time around to participate, and in incredible numbers, and that has changed the complexion of the Knesset.” 

Benn and Solomon weighed post-election scenarios, assuming the Jewish opposition parties would reject partnering with the Arab parties, which could lead to new elections or a unity government including both coalition and opposition Jewish parties.

Both are, in Benn’s words, “very bad options” for the bloc headed by former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot. Another election is unlikely to improve the opposition’s position and could well leave it worse off, while Netanyahu has a problematic track record when it comes to reaching out across the political divide.

“The idea of Netanyahu in a national unity government where there is some kind of equal division of power and labor is just absolutely ludicrous,” noted Solomon. The prime minister, she emphasized, “is a person who won't share, as they say in playgroup. He made agreements for rotating prime ministerships in the past, and then just threw it all into the trash can. This is not the kind of person that he is, and his agenda does not work cohabiting with anyone who would call themselves, you know, a liberal Democrat.” This leaves some “very bad options, because in both cases, Netanyahu is in power, regardless of how you call it.”

Read the latest developments and analysis on haaretz.com 

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