More than three years of war have reshaped the country, but few candidates are offering a vision for relations with the Palestinians, let alone a path toward resolving the conflict.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, rising settler violence in the West Bank and mounting international pressure to resolve the decades-old intractable conflict with a two-state solution are making the costs of that political silence increasingly difficult to ignore.<\/p>\n
\u201cObjectively, this is just not the main issue in this election,\u201d Prof. Gideon Rahat, a political scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem<\/a>, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a recent interview.<\/p>\n In contrast to the years leading up to Rabin\u2019s assassination in 1995 – and even those that followed – the divisions in this election have little to do with the question of peace with the Palestinians.<\/p>\n Rather, said Rahat, they are more about the fundamentals, the future character of the state and security. For the past four years, the government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to overhaul the country\u2019s judiciary, while a burgeoning ultra-Orthodox population has avoided compulsory military service even though Israel has been fighting a relentless war on seven different fronts.<\/p>\n And while there has been an attempt by Netanyahu\u2019s ruling Likud party to frame the debate as one between right-wing and left-wing, pro-and-anti-Palestinian statehood, Rahat said this was misleading.<\/p>\n Most of the parties in the opposition, those seeking to oust Netanyahu and the current government,\u00a0are a mix of center-right and right-wing parties. Only one Jewish party in the bloc, the Democrats, appears open to addressing the Palestinian issue.<\/p>\n Rahat pointed out that Hamas\u2019s attack on Israeli civilian communities in southern Israel and at a music festival had served to harden even those who previously thought a peaceful solution with the Palestinians might be possible.<\/p>\n Surveys published in recent years had already shown that support for a Palestinian state, or even a process to reach some kind of solution, had been steadily decreasing even before Oct. 7.<\/p>\n According to Tel Aviv University\u2019s Peace Index, which has published regular data on Israeli attitudes toward peace with the Palestinians since the first Oslo Accords were signed in September 1993, in July this year only 29% of the Jewish public in Israel now supports any form of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian leadership governing the Palestinians in the West Bank.<\/p>\n Broken down into right-wing vs. left-wing voters, the divisions on the issue of the peace process still appear to be sharp, with only 7% of those who identify as right-wing saying they support negotiations, compared to 83% of those on the left. Yet this is somewhat misleading, as overall, the percentage of people who identify with views traditionally associated with Israel\u2019s peace camp and the left has been steadily shrinking.<\/p>\n After a historic low turnout for the two traditional left-wing parties, Labor and Meretz, in the 2022 election, the two factions joined forces to form The Democrats, now led by former IDF general Yair Golan. And while the Democrats believe in pursuing separation from the Palestinians through a diplomatic and regional process, Golan has refrained from talking about the position throughout the election campaign.<\/p>\n Additionally, former prime minister Yair Lapid, who heads the center-left Yesh Atid Party and has stated in the past that he supports a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, has cooled on the idea.<\/p>\n He has teamed up with former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who is emphatically against the concept of two democratic states side by side, and is saying that the Hamas attack had postponed the possibility of Palestinian statehood at least for now.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think the idea is dead. I think it will be delayed significantly because we need to find ways to secure the safety of our people,\u201d Lapid reportedly said in an interview to a London-based Saudi Arabian newspaper in December 2023.<\/p>\n On the issue of settlements in the West Bank, recent surveys show that the majority of Israeli Jews support the concept. A poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute this month shows that around 55% of Israeli Jews support the policies of various governments to allow, and even encourage, the establishment of settlements. Only 32% think that settlement expansion was not correct, the research found.<\/p>\n While the question of peace with the Palestinians – and the possibility of a nation-state for them in Gaza or the West Bank, which many Israelis refer to by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria – is not being discussed on the political level, violent events in that contested area are becoming increasingly hard to ignore.<\/p>\n West Bank attacks undermine peace process<\/p>\n On Friday, Heidi Levine, a photojournalist with The Washington Post, was brutally attacked by masked settlers, as shown in video footage. And on Saturday, a group of European diplomats said they were similarly attacked. Both incidents took place as Palestinian farmers harvested their olive crop.<\/p>\n![\"Knesset](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/732261.jpeg\"\/)
Knesset candidate and former IDF Cheif of Staff Gadi Eisenkot election billboard in Cyprus vandalized with Palestinian flag colors, July 31, 2026. (credit: VIA WALLA)Future character of state, security a focus in Israel 2026 elections<\/p>\n