Israel voted for Israel: Why Gaza wasn’t on the ballot
Despite genocide, regional war and isolation, Israel's election revealed little appetite for political alternatives.
After one of the highest voter turnouts in decades, neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition nor the self-styled Zionist opposition alliance secured the 61 seats required for a parliamentary majority in the October 27 polls.
Netanyahu’s camp came first, with 53 seats, five more than the main opposition bloc. The Arab parties surged to a record 19 seats but have been relegated to merely observing coalition negotiations.
The judicial reforms ushered in at the start of Netanyahu’s government term in 2022 provoked the largest street protests in Israel’s history, while the prime minister himself is still embroiled in a corruption trial dating back to 2019. Alleged failures ahead of the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, that triggered Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have still to be reckoned with, despite overwhelming public pressure to do so. Moreover, the genocide has led to growing international isolation, while also providing the pretext for multiple attacks on countries across the region – the latest of which, undertaken with the United States on Iran in February, continues to roil energy markets around the world.
For Shenhav-Shahrabani, there has been “a powerful mechanism of denial” at work. “Not necessarily denial of the facts, but denial of their meaning,” he said.