What's at Stake in Israel's First Election Since October 7?

Three years after the October 7th attacks by Hamas, the war in Gaza has largely ground to a halt, but many of the key questions remain unresolved, and now Israel's preparing for the first national elections since those attacks on October 7th, 2023. How have the last three years changed Israel? Could these elections change Israel's policy in the West Bank, Gaza and its relationship with the United States and the rest of the world? To help us unpack this, I'm joined by Shira Efron. Shira has the Distinguished Chair for Israel Policy at the Rand Corporation. She's based in Israel and is also a Senior Fellow for Israel and Middle Eastern Affairs. I'm Lesley Vingemore, President and CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and welcome to DeepTish. It has been now three years since the attacks by Hamas we are recording on the day that actually Israel commemorates October 7th, so it's said, obviously. The commemoration is extraordinary. Tell us what is happening in Israel today. I think what could be lost on some people is to say, okay, it's been three years and the high intensity phase of the war ended a year ago with President Trump's 20-point plan and the hostages are back, so how come you are not moving forward? Of course, they're not all back home, not all are back home and more could have been returned alive. But I think the Israeli society, if we can talk in terms of post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD, Israel's still in the trauma phase. The sense of fear, both from what can happen from threats externally, but also lack of trust in the ability of the state to protect them. And I think that's what really happened and what shattered Israel's personal sense of security. Israel is, and Israel has been fighting wars since its independence and there's resilience and grit that is involved with us. What happened on October 7 is just the magnitude but also the fact that it wasn't just rockets from far. People were attacked in their very homes. The fact is that there was no one to come save them. That very sense of insecurity still remains with large parts of the population. What Israel normally does when it goes through disasters or large scale failure, Israel usually has a national commission of inquiry, which is independent body to check the facts. And then the now government basically has not allowed for such a commission of inquiry to happen. So there's no closure. You mean a failure to take the warnings that now we've heard extensive reporting on? We have to remember that the IDF did go through internal probes and most of the generals, they have resigned. But at the helm there's a Prime Minister and a political reign that has not resigned and Netanyahu knows that among the culprits, the ones will be responsible just by the fact that he was Prime Minister Israel for most of the last two decades, he is responsible about the warnings, whether they're true or not. There were indications all around that Hamas was playing something. There were the border observers that he'd spaten out that the young soldiers, female and soldiers who warned, we had Hamas's plan. The problem was in such a mindset, a conceptual trap that Hamas was deterred and weakened. All these pieces of information, they fit them in a puzzle that this is posturing that Hamas was angling for a better deal for more economics. So actually on the warnings themselves, there's another piece of a puzzle. The bigger puzzle is why his Israel pursued a policy that prioritized keeping Hamas in power, dividing Gaza from the West Bank and thinking this would be sustainable. This is the biggest issue and this is really the Netanyahu doctrine. I will say that I didn't speak about the Israeli pain, but 70,000 Palestinians have lost their lives, many civilians, and on Hamas militants. People continue to suffer incredible hardship and humanitarian crisis. Their Palestinian is also in the West Bank down to suffering. I mean, you say it very powerfully that people felt deeply insecure as a result to just the intense vulnerability of those people who were taken from the kibbutz and elsewhere. Does that continue to this moment or is there a change in the perception of security and insecurity in Israel? There is a change in perception, but it depends where when the military campaign of the last three wars has altered the security environment around Israel. Right? Hamas is now a shell of what it used to be. Hezbollah and Lebanon also, we might be able to get to Iran also, but those militants and humanitarian achievements have not been translated into a strategic, decisive outcome that produced regional stability. So when you go around the Gaza border, they know that Hamas is a shell of itself and Israel created this extensive buffer zone with Israeli forces now controlling between 60 and 70 percent of Gaza. But Hamas is still the de facto sovereign of Gaza and is still rearming. So there's the fear that, well, maybe we will forget, and Hamas will return to what it used to be. In Lebanon, similarly, Hezbollah is not what it used to be, but it's still stronger military and, you know, it's a topic that we worked on, then the Lebanese armed forces, right, than the laugh. Because the security threats are still present, different, but present, and because there hasn't been a decisive strategic outcome, many Israelis, even if they don't fear what's going to happen at this moment, they very much fear for the future. The sense of insecurity is understandable. But much of the rest of the world, not all of the rest of the world, much of the rest of the world is looking at Israel's policy and its behavior through the lens of the humanitarian devastation in Gaza, obviously. Where is that balance between the concern for the humanitarian devastation and the concern for securing Israel? You know, this is a really important question, and it's the one that Israelis are not concerned with at all, and unfortunately, they should have been, for lots of Israelis, there's really an echo chamber, and mostly just watched three channels of TV. And they were very insular because it was very clear that Israelis didn't know what was happening in Gaza, and didn't know what was happening in their name. And so they have not seen the images. Israelis had to make an effort to see it, and there were leaks. There was a leak of a WhatsApp group of channel 12, which is the biggest channel in Israel that actually came when some of the journalists started saying this was after a year or so into the war, not in the beginning. We need to show these pictures, and I think the leadership of the channel said, "No, no, our viewers don't want to watch this." The second thing that we have to remember, the high density of the campaign, you had hostages in Gaza, and there were constantly coming out videos of emaciated hostages forcing to dig their own graves and others. And so, these Israeli minds were like, "Why are we allowing giving food to the Gaza's when they are starving our hostages?" So there was a narrative. Let me pause you for one moment. I was there in the summer of 2024, but there were protests. This really stood out to me. The protests on the streets were those delinked to mean it. I had always assumed that those protests were partly driven by what was going on in Gaza. The protests were to bring the hostages back home, but there were no calls for changing the Israeli policy in Gaza. Only to the extent that it served the purpose of bringing the hostages back home. There was a delinking between the policy and the hostages. The idea was, let's end the war to bring the hostages back home, but on the civilian policy, what you're discussing. There was no pressure. There was a tiny group of human rights organizations and Israeli hardcore left to spoke about it. But even the Israeli left, the traditional left didn't speak about it. But when you put a mirror to their face and say, "Look, what's happening on our behalf?" You'd hear Israelis say, "Well, they deserve it." Or they had it coming. Or why is Hamas hiding in civilian places? Or Hamas is stealing the food. Now that is all correct. Hamas is a cynical terrorist organization that never cared about the welfare of its people. I have a lot of criticism about this. And I think it's wrong morally, but it also proved to be really wrong strategically. Israel, even if you don't care, Israel loves the legitimacy of the world. Because I think when I heard Israelis saying, "Well, Biden's gone. Blinken is gone. We can cut the aid and this will pressure Hamas." And I said, "You have no idea. Because Republicans are not going to take this either. No one wants to see a hungry child. There are things that are just undone. Of course, the Trump administration also pressured Israel to reopen, and we've heard its pressure. Because this is a human story. It's not political. story. Well, I just also wanted to share with you one of our findings. We have a poll on Israel being published today. American feelings toward Israel have declined through the lowest level in recorded and council poll since 1978. And the average rating now is at 44 degrees. So the lowest since 1978, down to 44 degrees out of 100, how do you see these elections going and how much of it is an election that is a referendum in October 7th as opposed to, you know, the sort of things that elections are so often about, which is people's daily lives. So I'll get to this in a moment I promise, but I do want to acknowledge what you just said, and I would love to see your survey, but it adds to a series of surveys connected by Pew and Gallup and various other institutions to show that the sentiment for Israel is at its lowest. And Israel needs the international community. There's no this idea of Israel being sparta. Israel is a small country. It depends on foreign investments, supply chains, of course, the US for international cover. So the conversation is shaping and whether it's in the out government or a new government, I'll talk about it in a second, what are the likely outcomes, but this is an issue that they will have to contend with whether they like it or not. And it's not a PR issue. On the elections, Israeli elections, they're always kind of crazy, and this time it's going to be even crazier, and it's a parliamentary system. It's not one winner takes it all. You vote for the Knesset, and then a party needs to be able to for a coalition government, but surely share it just before you continue. I think people feel that the policy as you so articulately set out earlier is Netanyahu's theory of the case, theory of peace, theory of security. People so heavily associate Israel's trajectory from Gaza to the war in Iran to Lebanon with Netanyahu that it seems like the stakes are extraordinarily high. And maybe that's just completely wrong in terms of either where things are going or how they might change. So I agree with you, you know, this is probably the most consequential elections for Israel and possibly the region as a whole. We're still a few weeks before the elections, and we don't know where the elections are going to lead. I should have been much clearer and speak about a landslide for the opposition after the October 7, which this is also going to be a referendum in October 7, but also the years that have passed since then, when you had a failure of government to respond on all levels. So, you know, when you empty the civil service and you leave this fly Dubai incident, for instance, is a very good example. I think it's a good metaphor for this. You have a government failure and you have civilians who are taking care of themselves and taking their own responsibility for their own lives. It's true Israeli aviation authorities should have been responsible for screening who can fly foreign airlines to Israel. But at the moment, we have the the BB blog and the to not to BB blog and we have the Arabs and it's too close to call at the moment and we can find ourselves within the Netanyahu coalition, similar one to we have now, some sort of a unity government, just another round of elections when he stays caretaker Prime Minister. Oh, we can have an opposition government. Where is his approval rating now? I mean, I understand it's more complicated because it's a parliamentary system. But where is Netanyahu's approval rating now within Israel? So it depends who you ask, like a thing in the US. Where you stand is where you sit. It's among his base. He can do no wrong. Whereas most of the country does not appreciate him. The liquid party, his party specifically is pulling low. But the block, those parties that are going to go with him, they're around 52 and 52. The Knesset has 120 seats. The rest go to the Arabs for very, again, I think moral racist but also fully strategically good. The opposition let said that they will not form a government with the Arab parties because they're not Zionist. And so no one has the numbers at the moment to form a coalition, not a stable majority coalition. So we don't know where we're going to be historically. I think that in either outcome, some things are going to change. Even if you have an opposition government, some things are not going to change. And Gaza, in Gaza, so this is Gaza as I think is an interesting case. My understanding, and this is again from my work with the conversations with board of peace officials and UN teams and others working around, that they're operating assumption that the U.S. is adamant about pursuing their 20 point plan and implementing it after the Israeli elections. No matter who is there. And in the moment, it wasn't politically sensible to fight with Netanyahu over the things that he refused to do, which are letting the Tecnicradi Committee for Gaza and Cag enter Gaza, letting the Shimbet vetted 6,000 police to go train in Egypt because the Egyptians wanted Israeli commitment that they would let them go back into Gaza. Israel has stalled and said no to everything. And even when Hamas said we are willing to begin conversations about this armament, even if Israel rightly is skeptical about believing Hamas, Israel and say, okay, we don't believe them. But let's see how we managed this, Israel disconnected. But we are likely to see not this current policy, letting more robust tense and also temporary housing solutions that are now in Egypt waiting, but Netanyahu refused to have them in. Go in, but this can happen under the saying, yeah, I'm going to emphasize. Where I think, and I hope we can see a big difference, is the West Bank. Again, calibrate expectations, it's going to be very difficult to undo what this government has done, including return of settlements, building 230 illegal, according to the Israeli law, outposts and farm, settler violence that is, I mean, so shameful beyond any, with impunity from the government, without smotrich and benqueer in the coalition, I think you could see a more sensible policy on the West Bank with cracking the whip in a serious way. It's not done now on the Jewish terrorism. We're restoring some funding to the Palestinian Authority when I think this in itself may not tilt public opinion in the world against Israel, but it will stop the bleeding and it will start helping. The way you are articulating an election that either, just because we're going to sort of move through it, is going to have a profound impact potentially on movement in Gaza one way or the other, and that has a huge implication for a very different policy in the West Bank. I mean, that's quite actually extraordinary. Are you optimistic that a new Israeli government, a new leadership without Netanyahu at the helm could actually move forward with a very different policy given what we've seen over the last few years? I'm optimistic about this. I think there's no question that they can move to a very different policy. What we're seeing now goes against Israeli national security doctrine for decades. Israel's national security doctrine relied on three pillars. It was always the idea of deterrence. It worked until it doesn't. That's deterrence. Early warning and the event of a war, you have a decisive victory. Also, the idea is have fewer fronts as possible and the shortest wars as possible because Israel knew that it's a small country and the people's military, you have to rely on your people and Israel depends on the international community. On October 7th, when the deterrence are an early warning failed so miserably, Israel basically threw the battle with the maybe and adopted this thing that's called prevention. We're no longer going to look at enemies' intentions, only capabilities and who's an enemy, everyone could be the Egyptians with whom we have peace, fundamentally unsustainable. I think a new government, first of all, can do something else and also it must because the pressures from the U.S. they will have to show some discernible differences from the current government to block sanctions that are already in and prevent this from escalating in here. The pressures from inside and outside I think will force whoever government to change course. If the change is going to be minor or major, it depends on a lot of things. If I want to be pessimistic, I will say no chance, they're all cowards and they will be afraid. If I want to be a little bit more optimistic, I can say, you know, "Begin, Menachan-Begin, Alikud Haag went for peace with Egypt." It's Haag Rabin died pursuing peace when Rabin took over labor. I remember people saying that it's the right wing of labor took over and he was the Haag Ishran. And Ariel Sharon was one of the architects of this settlement enterprise. He removed settlements and pulled Israel out of Gaza. And they all went against their initial instincts and their base because they understood that not acting so will be detrimental to Israel's polls. Can they? Will the world support it? Will there be opportunities for normalization and regional integration? Finally, Israel sort of trying to climb out of this holy diet itself into it with the help of its adversaries. As we come to a close, maybe you could just give our listeners a sense. We are very focused on the war in Iran, but you're right there in the region. And I'm curious how Israelis view the war in Iran right now. And do you think this will also be a key issue in the election? I think Iran is not going to be a key issue in the elections. Frankly, I mean, the blocks and the opinions already baked into what people will propose. I think Israelis for the most part were very supportive of the war in Iran. They are enemy in Iran, six Israel's destroyer. And there's operational window of opportunity. And obviously doing it with the US, which Israelis always wanted to do it with the US, not just support, but active participation. The disappointment has been pretty remarkable because, you know, in a tiny owl window, the Israeli public and said, this will be the end. We will topple the regime, this evil regime, and sever their ties with all the proxies around us. And of course, that hasn't happened. So it really is a security. It remains a security concern for Israel's Israelis. The most part, I think, the Israeli narrative is this maritime locate can work and will have to give it time. And who knows, maybe President Trump will want to resume the fight as we're seeing now, right now. There's no question that Netanyahu would have loved to restart the war on Iran with an Israeli perspective, but he's really on this front. He's totally beholden to Netanyahu. The Iranian threat is probably not going to disappear, but how it's managed. It's very much of the control of the US at the moment. Shira Efron, this has been extraordinary. We've covered a huge amount. It is a difficult day and a difficult week. And I think all of us, especially for all of you in Israel have memories that are presumably like October 7, 2023 was yesterday. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much, Leslie, for having me and thank you for the great conversation. That was Rand's Shira Efron. Thank you so much for listening. As a reminder, the analysis and views that you've just heard belong to the people who expressed them and not to the the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.