Eisenkot or Netanyahu: No matter who forms government, democracy is dead
David Hearst writes in Middle East Eye on 28 October 2026 :
f Israel were a democracy, as the Jewish diaspora claims, a government would now be formed that reflects the result of last night’s election. This would be a majority or minority administration of Gadi Eisenkot with the participation, either formal or informal, of the two Palestinian blocs.
If Benjamin Netanyahu honoured this result, there would be no way back to power for his ultra-rightwing bloc. For Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, it would be the end of an era. But Israel is not a democracy, and Netanyahu is no democrat.
It is a settler state that has moulded itself increasingly tightly around the identity and views of Jewish fascists.
It’s an occupying power where Palestinians are ejected from their homes, as they are in Hebron, with no court judgement, no right of redress or compensation, nor any legal process at all.
The central issue Jews face was not even on the ballot. On the ballot were Netanyahu’s leadership, his judicial coup, the refusal of the ultra-Orthodox to take part in military service, Israel’s international isolation – anything but the genocide in Gaza, the pogroms in the occupied West Bank, and the future of Palestinians.
Existential threat
Every Zionist party in this campaign acted as if one half of the population of the land Israel dominates did not exist and should be excluded.
Several parties made the deportation and displacement of Palestinians key parts of their campaign. Religious Zionism, led by Bezalel Smotrich, promised to “Judaise” the Galilee and the Negev (Naqab), home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
The Palestinian population of Israel rightly concluded that they were facing an existential threat, and voted in record numbers in an attempt to prevent this from happening. Palestinians who had boycotted the vote for decades went to the polls.
“We do not feel safe. A sense of security has completely vanished – and I mean security on every level,” Ibrahim Said told Middle East Eye. “I feel not just like a second-class citizen, but like a twentieth-class one.”
In any other country, a result like this would clearly put the Arab parties in the position of kingmaker … But we do not live in an age of graceful losers
Around 80 percent of Palestinian citizens of Israel voted. This result will be a red flag for National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who will remember the shock of this election in future attempts to restrict and limit the voting power of Palestinians.
Jewish and Palestinian citizens were never equal, but the disparity between them has now become grotesque.