Israel votes on Tuesday. What's actually at stake?
Why it hits youIsrael and Gaza is one of the most argued-about stories on your feed, and this vote decides who runs Israel next. It reaches the UK too, through sanctions, protests and a sharp rise in hate incidents against both Jewish and Muslim people.
Israelis choose a new parliament in the first election since the 7 October 2023 attack. The final polls show neither side with a majority, so the result may not be settled for weeks. Here is every side, and what each one leaves out.
The Facts
What everyone agrees on
Before anyone spins it. Every one of these is checkable.
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Israelis vote for parties, not local candidates, to fill all 120 seats in parliament. Forming a government takes the backing of 61, and any list under 3.25% of the vote gets no seats. Times of Israel ↗
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This is a scheduled election at the end of parliament's four-year term, not a snap vote. About 7.3 million people are eligible, and turnout in 2022 was 70.6%. Times of Israel ↗
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The final polls, published on Friday 24 October, put Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar narrowly ahead of Netanyahu's Likud, with neither bloc reaching 61 seats. Times of Israel ↗
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On 2 October Israel's Supreme Court unanimously overturned an elections committee decision that would have barred both main Arab-majority lists from standing. Times of Israel ↗
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All the hostages taken to Gaza have been returned. The last, the body of Ran Gvili, was recovered in January 2026. ABC7 News (US) ↗
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Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who are not Israeli citizens cannot vote in this election. Al Jazeera ↗
Every Side · 1 of 3
Arab-majority parties
We aren't in anybody's pocket
The Joint List and Ra'am poll around 14 seats between them, enough to swing the result. Their leaders say Arab citizens, about a fifth of Israelis, are treated as unfit to share power, pointing to the attempt to ban both lists from standing. The Joint List wants action on violent crime in Arab towns and a path to a Palestinian state, and won't give the opposition “an open check”. Ra'am says it could work with either side.
- Yousef Jabareen (Joint List)
- Mansour Abbas (Ra'am)
- Arab first-time voters (Al Jazeera)
Side labels are our editorial calls for now. How we'll rate lean
Every Side · 2 of 3
The opposition
Our goal is not for one side to defeat the other
Five parties stretching from the right to the left, led in the polls by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, have signed a pact to replace Netanyahu. They promise a state inquiry into the 7 October failures within weeks, military service for ultra-Orthodox men, and term limits for prime ministers. Eisenkot says Netanyahu “neglected” the hostages and calls his way of governing “poison to our society”.
- Gadi Eisenkot (Yashar)
- Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid (Together)
- Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu)
- Yair Golan (The Democrats)
Side labels are our editorial calls for now. How we'll rate lean
Every Side · 3 of 3
Netanyahu's bloc
There is not, and there will not be, a Palestinian state. Period.
Likud and its nationalist and religious allies say Netanyahu stood up to international pressure and left Israel stronger against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Their slogan is “Right or Palestine”, warning that the opposition would need Arab parties to govern. On Iran, Netanyahu says “we've done 90 percent of the work” and only he can finish it. He calls his corruption trial “crude political hunting”.
- Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud)
- Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit)
- Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism)
- Shas and United Torah Judaism
Side labels are our editorial calls for now. How we'll rate lean
The Blindspot · what the headlines skip
Both front-runners reject a Palestinian state
If Netanyahu loses, don't expect a two-state breakthrough. Eisenkot said in August that anyone thinking about two states after 7 October is “just delusional”. Reuters expects no sweeping shift towards Palestinians whoever wins.
The Blindspot · what the headlines skip
Three years on, there's still no state inquiry into 7 October
No independent state commission has been set up to examine the failures that day. Netanyahu has resisted one and blames the security chiefs; his opponents promise one straight away. It's the question his campaign talks about least.
The Blindspot · what the headlines skip
Netanyahu's own allies are split over the draft
The ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism have tied their support to protecting full-time religious students from the draft, while about 80,000 eligible ultra-Orthodox men haven't enlisted. Neither has committed to sitting only with Netanyahu.
The Blindspot · what the headlines skip
The opposition can't reach 61 without Arab votes
No final poll gives the anti-Netanyahu parties a majority on their own, yet most of their leaders rule out relying on Arab parties. Something has to give after Tuesday, which is why the result may take weeks to settle.
The Blindspot · what the headlines skip
Many young Israelis are moving right
More than half a million Israelis are voting for the first time, and many are backing hard-right parties because they feel safer with them. “Itamar Ben Gvir gives me a sense of security,” a 20-year-old told the BBC. UK feeds rarely explain why.
Your Call
- Arab-majority parties: not yet
- The opposition: not yet
- Netanyahu's bloc: not yet
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Don't take our word for it. This is everything the breakdown is built on.
Hero image: File photo: Dr. Avishai Teicher / PikiWiki Israel via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5 · 2012 ↗
By No Glaze News · published