Replacing Netanyahu Will Not End Palestinian Suffering

(Photo by The White House via Flickr/Public Domain)

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With the Israeli elections scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud-led bloc is seeking to maintain power. The bloc relies on Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, two self-avowed “fascists” who lead Israel’s two furthest-right parties, Religious Zionism and Jewish Power, respectively.  

Five opposition leaders have joined together to form a centrist bloc in an effort to oust Netanyahu. The leaders are: Yair Lapid, Yesh Atid’s leader; Naftali Bennett, Bennett 2026’s head; Avigdor Lieberman, Yisrael Beiteinu’s leader; Gadi Eisenkot, Yashar’s head; and Yair Golan, the Democrats’ leader. 

There are several other smaller parties running that could prove key in forming a new government. Most of these parties are either right-wing anti-Netanyahu parties or Ultra-Orthodox religious parties. There is also a slate of Palestinian-led parties, which Israel’s Central Election Authority banned last month. However, Israel’s Supreme Court unanimously overturned the ban. 

The Problem is Bigger Than Netanyahu  

Many Western politicians and media figures portray Israel’s upcoming election as a moment for change. They craft this argument by posing Netanyahu’s government as the only bad actor. For example, in a 2024 speech, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Netanyahu an “obstacle to peace” and demanded new leadership. 

Other Senate Democrats concluded last year that the “Netanyahu government is engaged in ethnic cleansing.” Democratic House leadership has also made “confronting Netanyahu” a central plank of its 2026 midterm election push. Even progressive politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders place the blame on the “extremist Netanyahu government,” rather than on Israel’s system of Zionist supremacy and century-long settler-colonial project.  

Last month, Israelis in New York held an anti-Netanyahu rally when he came to speak at the United Nations General Assembly. Their main slogan was “vote him out.” At the protest, congressional Democratic candidate Brand Lander, a self-proclaimed “liberal Zionist,” said: “we vehemently disagree with Netanyahu’s wars.”

Yes, Netanyahu is leading the Israeli government during this genocide. However, he is far from an outlier. Over 50% of Israelis support expelling Palestinians from Gaza, and a majority support Israel’s destructive campaigns in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Iran. 

Phantom Opposition 

The opposition leaders are not any different from Netanyahu. They are against a Palestinian state and support the same Zionist supremacist policies.

Yair Lapid has frequently gone on racist anti-Palestinian and Arab tirades. He also opposes Jews marrying non-Jews, and has refused to include Palestinians in any governing coalition. Like Netanyahu, he supports “Greater Israel,” meaning annexing all of Palestine and Jordan, as well as parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.   

Naftali Bennet says he is “more right-wing than Netanyahu.” He favours annexing most of the West Bank, opposes Palestinian statehood, and denies that Palestine is under Israeli occupation. Bennet has also advocated for killing Palestinian prisoners and called Palestinian children “terrorists.”

In fact, both Bennet and Lapid held major positions in Netanyahu’s past governments. Lapid was finance minister from 2013 to 2014, while Bennet was economy minister from 2013 to 2015, education minister from 2015 to 2019, and defence minister from 2019 to 2020. As defence minister, he advocated for more destructive military policies against Palestinians besieged in Gaza. 

Friend To Foe

Avigdor Lieberman was also a minister in several Netanyahu governments. His ultimate falling out with Netanyahu came in 2018, when he resigned as defence minister after Netanyahu reached a ceasefire with Hamas. He is against Palestinian statehood and has repeatedly tried to strip Palestinian citizens of Israel of their citizenship and right to vote. 

Gadi Eisenkot, the most popular opposition candidate, was also a minister in a previous Netanyahu government. He was the Israeli military’s chief of staff in 2018, when it massacred over 200 Palestinian protesters during Gaza’s Great March of Return. 

Just like his fellow candidates, he is against Palestinian statehood. Eisenkot supports annexing the West Bank and expanding illegal settlements. He has openly supported apartheid, calling for “separating” Israelis from Palestinians and for establishing a “solid Jewish majority.” He even pioneered the military doctrine that later guided Netanyahu’s genocidal strategy in Gaza: the Dahiya Doctrine. 

Architect of Destruction

The doctrine is named after the southern Beirut neighbourhood where Hezbollah is based. During the 2006 Israeli assault on Lebanon, Eisenkot ordered the military to flatten Dahiya.

In 2008, planning another military assault on Lebanon, he said: “What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village. We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages; they are military bases. This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.” 

He continues to advocate for this doctrine. In March 2026, he said, “the Dahiya Doctrine has never been more relevant than it is now, and it must be implemented.”

Lesser of How Many Evils?

Yair Golan is considered the least evil of the leading candidates. Unlike the others, he has called for forming a government with Palestinian parties, and supports a “two-state solution.” However, he frames a two-state solution as segregating Palestinians from Israelis.

In 2025, he criticised Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying it was “killing babies as a hobby.” However, he added a caveat here as well. He later said he was referring to Netanyahu and “the most failed government in Israel’s history — not to the IDF [the Israeli military].” He asserted that the Israeli military “is [his] home and it is [his] heart.” He served in the Israeli military for 38 years as a soldier and general, and was deputy chief of staff to Eisenkot. 

Netanyahu actually preferred Golan for the chief of staff role over Eisenkot. During his time in the military, Golan participated in, and even led, the decades-long Israeli occupation of Lebanon. In 2006, he endorsed a massive ground assault on Lebanon. While he was a general, Golan even ordered soldiers under his command to use Palestinian civilians as human shields. In line with Eisenkot’s Dahiya Doctrine, he also advocated for “the maximum of Israeli power at the same time on all enemy formations, everywhere, in the shortest time possible.”  

Despite Golan seeking to revive the Israeli Left, he enacted the very military policies the right-wing candidates support. Under his leadership, Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians will continue, just quieter and slower than under Netanyahu. 

This is Not a Recent Phenomenon 

It was, in fact, self-avowed left-wing Zionist leaders who ethnically cleansed Palestine to establish Israel in 1948. The Zionist left ruled Israel for the next 29 years. Israel’s economy had many socialist and social-democratic elements. However, those leaders spoke about Palestinians, and Arabs more broadly, in the same way Netanyahu and his colleagues do today. 

Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, advocated for Greater Israel. He even said that accepting the 1947 U.N. partition plan did not mean Israel would commit to respecting the established borders. 

In 1937, nearly a decade before Israel’s violent establishment, Ben-Gurion wrote: “We must expel Arabs and take their places…and, if we have to use force…then we have force at our disposal.” He also actively participated in expelling and massacring Palestinians between 1947 and 1948, when he led the Zionist terrorist organization, Haganah.

Violent Continuation

All of Ben-Gurion successors copied his rhetoric and actions. In 1954, Moshe Sharrett’s government orchestrated a secret operation called the “Lavon Affair,” where Israeli agents placed bombs in American and British facilities across Egypt, seeking to blame “Arab extremists.” The Lavon Affair was such a disaster that Ben-Gurion came back to power. 

During his second tenure, Israel again attempted to destabilize Egypt when it, France, and the United Kingdom (U.K.) invaded the Suez Canal. That operation was another failure, as the invading powers could not capture the Canal, and the U.S. and the Soviet Union quickly halted and condemned their actions. 

Ben-Gurion’s successor, Levi Eshkol, initiated the Six-Day War against Syria, Egypt, and Palestine. Eshkol was the Prime Minister who cemented Israel’s full occupation of Palestine when the Israeli military seized the West Bank and Gaza on June 10, 1967. All subsequent Israeli Prime Ministers maintained and expanded this illegal military occupation, as nearly all the current candidates promise to do. 

Western media and politicians often portray the next two Prime Ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Golda Meir, as progressives and peacemakers. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Rabin did orchestrate the Oslo Accords, which were meant to establish the framework for an eventual diminished Palestinian state. However, he was brutal during his time as defence minister from 1984 to 1990. As the First Intifada broiled, Rabin ordered death squads across the West Bank and Gaza, and established the break-their-bones policy. Candidates in the current election promise similar levels of brutality against Palestinians who dare to resist military occupation and settlement expansion. 

Lady of Lead 

Golda Meir, who some in the West portray as a feminist icon, was a violent anti-Palestinian and Arab racist. She frequently denied Palestinian existence, just as current Israeli politicians do. Golda even blamed Palestinians for forcing “[Israel] to kill their sons.” She staunchly supported illegal settlements in the West Bank to the point that she poisoned Palestinian land to force Palestinians out and replace them with settlers. 

Like the overwhelming majority of the current slate, Golda favoured Greater Israel. What sets her apart from modern Israeli leaders is that she sought to hide Israel’s expanding settlements and occupation. Current leaders brag about their atrocities. 

Golda was such a racist that she insulted Jews of Arab origin: “We have immigrants from Morocco, Libya, Iran, Egypt and other countries with a 16th century level.” Her and the Zionist left’s racism, paired with the success of the 1967 Six-Day War and the failure of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, led to the rise of the Israeli right. 

Right-Wing Turn

Menachem Begin, the founder of the Israeli right, capitalized on the Zionist left’s Ashkenazi supremacy. Begin courted Arab Jews since they started settling in the early 1950s. He also exploited the 1967 and 1973 wars. 

Many in Israeli society saw the outcome of the Six-Day War as divine intervention. Israel had defeated three enemy armies and occupied parts of Egypt, Syria, and all of Palestine. Begin aligned himself with religious Zionists and fervently promoted settling the newly occupied territories. 

Even though Israel ultimately won the Yom Kippur War, the Egyptian and Syrian armies had forced the Israeli soldiers to retreat until the U.S. supplied them with its most advanced weaponry. And so, 1973 became a difficult year for Israel. Begin seized on the post-war anger and shame, aiming it at Meir and the ruling Zionist left.  

The war’s aftermath also brought severe economic crises, as inflation exploded thanks partly to the Arab oil embargo. Begin jumped on that opportunity as well. He crafted a populist message portraying the ruling Labour Party as made up of rich, out-of-touch elites. His message, paired with the previous decades’ astute maneuvering, gifted him a shock victory in 1977.   

The right rose to power not thanks to a popular demand to increase Palestinian suffering; there was already more than enough of that, but rather an uprising from the Israeli underclass. Begin capitalized upon their frustrations, poor economic conditions, and post-war malaise. The only difference between Likud and Labour’s position on Palestine is that Likud was proud and boastful. 

New Election, Same Results   

The early Zionist settlers built Israel on the foundation of ethnic cleansing. For the State of Israel to exist, Zionist leaders needed to remove the Palestinians who had already been living on the land for centuries. They also committed themselves to constant land theft and entrenched racism after establishing Israel. All 14 Israeli Prime Ministers and their cabinet members followed this destructive, settler-colonial doctrine. 

Israel will continue to act as it always has until someone holds it accountable. It does not matter what the party makeup in the Knesset is, nor who holds the title of Prime Minister. Israel will continue oppressing Palestinians until the West ends its inaction and complicity, and finally holds Israeli officials accountable.

Edited by Ayah Mohammad