Israel Moving Sharply Rightwards? It’s Been There For Decades

Were you surprised by Israel’s election results? You shouldn’t have been. And if you think that the returns are a reflection of burning domestic issues (cost of living, rampant crime in the Arab sector, haredi draft exemption, Court “Reform”), think again.

And here’s one more debunking: from the outside, Israel’s election results might seem to indicate that ideologically, the country is split relatively equally between “Left-Center” and “Right” regarding national security. Wrong. Very wrong.

Other than the Yair Golan-led “Democrats” party, no other Jewish party that passed the voting threshold necessary to enter the Knesset (3.25%) this past Tuesday can be considered “Left.” Indeed, by European and American standards, one would be hard put to call any of the other parties “Center”. Of course, there is a wide range within the “Right,” but regarding the core issue of a Palestinian state and Israel retaining at least parts of Judea & Samaria (I don’t use “West Bank” because that’s almost a defunct term in Israeli society), there isn’t a whole lot differentiating the Likud from the parties of Eizenkot, Lieberman, and Bennett-Lapid.

The major question is WHY?

The simple (but overly simplistic) answer is Oct. 7. Any country that was viciously attacked as was Israel back in 2023 would immediately strike forcefully against its enemy, concomitantly reverting psychologically to a more a far militaristic mindset. For instance, FDR kept America out of WW2 for over two years, until Pearl Harbor. Upon being brutally and suddenly attacked, the U.S. then declared war against Japan a mere one day later (Dec. 8, 1941) – and a mere two months after that (Feb. 19, 1942), FDR signed an Executive Order to place Japanese residents and even Japanese-U.S. citizens in detention camps – eventually 120,000 ended up there during the war.

There’s an obvious parallel here with what Hamas did on Oct. 7, 2023. However, another critical aspect is quite different. The Japanese goal was relatively narrow in scope: trying to undermine America’s ability to control the Pacific theater of war. There was no thought of decimating the U.S. population at large or even taking over large territorial areas. Conversely, Hamas’s goal was and remains “totalistic”: destroying Israel completely, with its population thrown into the sea (at least metaphorically – and literally if they could pull it off).

Another key difference. The Japanese people were not asked nor were they told ahead of time what their government and army intended to do. Not so the population of Gaza. In 2017 Hamas issued a revised “Constitution” (A Document of General Principles and Policies) that expressly “rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

No less germane to the issue at hand is the fact that the Hamas original 1988 Charter framed the Israel-Palestine struggle not as a secular dispute over land, but as a zero-sum religious war between Moslems and Jews. And it was within this charter that Hamas received 44.5% of the vote in the 2006 Palestinian elections, and close to 50% in all of Gaza. In other words, although survey polling showed that a majority of Gazans (and Palestinians in general) wanted a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine), in political practice they went with the party that worked for Israel’s destruction.

But all that was before Oct. 7. Polling can obviously not take place in Gaza given the destruction and displacement of the population. But one assumes that that at the least their opinion regarding Israel (present and future) is no less antagonistic than their West Bank compatriots. And here we find the bottom-line reason for Israelis moving rightwards.

Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Issues conducted an in-depth survey of West Bank Palestinians in 2025. The major findings:

More than half of the Palestinian public in the West Bank (54%) thinks that the State of Israel has no right to exist, while 38% believes it does, and 8% did not express an opinion. Among 18–34 year-olds in the West Bank, the proportion opposing Israel’s existence is particularly high (75%) compared to older age groups. (https://www.inss.org.il/publication/survey-palestinians/)

In short, not only do most West Bank Palestinians consider the State of Israel to be illegitimate, but the “future” looks even worse with a full three-quarters of the youngest adult cohort holding this opinion!

So, what do most Israelis make of this? Indeed, what is the only conclusion that one can make of this? There is no realistic partner for peace. A massive, murderous attack – combined with political (opinion) support for Hamas’s stated goal – what is the average Israeli supposed to think? Whether wrong or right, s/he will think, and vote, Right.

Thus, for the foreseeable future the “2-state solution” issue is a dead letter, and the Israeli public’s moving Right is their way of guaranteeing that it remains a non-starter as long as the Palestinians (especially Hamas) don’t change their stripes or leave the scene.

Indeed, foreign supporters of the Palestinians – especially those who (absurdly) charge Israel with “Genocide” – are actually working counterproductively. For the more they cry “Genocide” the more Israelis are reminded of Hamas’s truly genocidal intentions as propounded in its Charter. Not a group that is capable of any reasonable peace (understatement!).

From the election results it’s not yet clear who will form the next government (if any are at all capable, given the Arab parties’ large support). But what is clear is that whatever the governing coalition, the “Palestinian issue” will remain on the back burner. For Israel’s Jewish mainstream, internal issues – haredi draft; Oct. 7 Commission of Inquiry; Constitutional change; the nature of Israeli democracy, etc. – is what will command the country’s attention in the coming years.

Paradoxically, that’s precisely because those were not the issues that concerned most of Israel’s Jewish voters this past election. Perhaps by putting the Palestinian issue to rest (at least for the foreseeable future), the country can start to resolve its numerous internal issues.

P.S. As pure speculation, it’s possible that as the hours of Election Day moved forward and all of Israel’s media continued to report the huge Arab turnout supporting the Arab parties, many Jews who voted later in the day “switched” their intention, and moved “back” to the Likud as the “safe” anti-Arab haven.