On October 27, Israel will hold its first general elections since the October 7, 2023, massacre, in which Hamas murdered many Israelis (Jews and Arabs) and foreign nationals. After three years of war, Israel has lost soldiers in Gaza and along the Lebanese border, while Israeli military operations have devastated Gaza, killing tens of thousands of civilians and leaving hundreds of thousands wounded, hungry, and homeless. Israel has also been through two major rounds of war with Iran, while the situation in the West Bank continues to deteriorate, with Jewish settlers carrying out daily acts of violence against Palestinians.

Voting is not as rational an act as we would like to believe. In Israel’s upcoming elections, we will discover which emotion holds greater sway over Israeli society: fear and hatred, or hope for a different, shared future.

So, what are the upcoming elections really about? What factors will determine Israel’s future?

Several political and emotional divides will shape these elections. The first divide is the old and familiar pro-Bibi versus anyone-but-Bibi split. For many Israelis, their feelings towards Benjamin Netanyahu (nicknamed Bibi), the incumbent Prime Minister (PM), may matter more than traditional ideological divisions. Netanyahu has been in power almost uninterrupted since 2009 — he was out of office between June 2021 and December 2022 — and has spent recent years on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. He has become a deeply hated figure for many, who associate him with corruption, social divisions, and the rise of the fundamentalist settler far-Right.

His controversial overhaul of the judiciary sparked months of mass protests across Israel in early 2023. The country’s politics is increasingly divided between two blocs: the “Bibi bloc”, comprising parties willing to serve under his........

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