When Israelis go to the polls on October 27, much of the world will be rooting for the defeat of the country’s longtime prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Under his nearly two decades of rule, Israel has become steadily more aggressive. It has abandoned any pretense of supporting a two-state solution; started constructing hundreds of new Jewish settlements in the West Bank; and, following Hamas’s cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, laid waste to the Gaza Strip, occupied parts of Lebanon and Syria, and launched war against Iran, its archnemesis. Meanwhile, its democratic institutions have faced endless attacks by Netanyahu and his allies, who have proposed laws that would, among other things, greatly curtail the power of Israel’s courts. Should he return to power for an unprecedented seventh term, many fret that the country will permanently transition into a rogue theocratic actor.

To many voters, this election thus marks a crucial turning point in Israeli domestic policy. The prime minister’s main political opponent, former Israel Defense Forces Chief Gadi Eisenkot, holds a more liberal worldview than his competitor. He supports an independent judiciary, a free press, and a professional civil service. Should he win, he will likely try to reverse Netanyahu’s efforts to curtail each institution’s independence.

But an Eisenkot victory is unlikely to change Israel’s foreign policy or approach to the Palestinians. Almost all of Israel’s Jewish political parties, Eisenkot’s included, are opposed to Palestinian statehood, not just Netanyahu’s Likud. They all believe that Israel’s brutal war on Gaza was morally just and practically necessary. And almost all of them think that Israel was right to attack Iran and to establish and create what its government and military call “security zones”—occupied territory—in Lebanon and Syria. In fact, the only real disagreement between Eisenkot and Netanyahu on matters of security is whether the latter made the right tactical decisions in each of these conflicts, such as when Netanyahu rejected a cease-fire in Gaza that would have freed Israeli hostages earlier.

That is not to say he will follow the same exact course. Eisenkot and Netanyahu differ in important ways on the barrage of West Bank settler attacks against helpless Palestinians, which are aimed at driving them out of their land. The prime minister, committed to his far-right allies, shrugs off the issue, whereas his competitor calls their behavior “Jewish terror.” Even if Eisenkot has little pity for the Palestinian victims, he realizes that the West Bank is on the verge of a bloody explosion and that Israel is at risk of even greater international opprobrium because of its reckless policy there. But overall, no matter what happens in the elections, Israel will continue to repress the Palestinians and strike its enemies. It will thus face diplomatic and economic costs, as the country’s frustrated partners begin cutting off aid and perhaps even enacting sanctions.

There are many issues at play in Israel’s election. Politicians, for example, have debated ultra-Orthodox exemptions from the draft, Netanyahu’s corruption charges, and what, if anything, the government should do about Jewish terrorism. But on the whole, the contest has been focused on who is to blame for failing to stop Hamas’s October 7 attack, which killed 1,200 Israelis and resulted in 251 more being taken hostage in one day. The opposition has argued that Netanyahu is responsible for the country’s worst-ever security failure, pointing out that he sustained Hamas with Qatari money, ignored intelligence warnings about Hamas plots, and then blocked an independent investigation into what happened. Eisenkot, who lost a son and two nephews to fighting in Gaza, has been particularly unsparing in his criticism, repeatedly hammering Netanyahu for refusing to take any accountability for the calamity. The prime minister and his supporters, for their part, have brushed off these........

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