Israel calls itself "the only democracy in the Middle East.” Yet when Arab parties win historic electoral support, they are accused of stealing the election; when Palestinians are killed in the thousands, the architects of the military strategy behind their destruction are marketed as moderates. This is not a contradiction at the margins of Israeli politics. It is a defining feature of the system.

The election has produced no clear winner. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc is projected to hold 53 seats, against 48 for the opposition led by Gadi Eisenkot. Arab-led parties have secured a historic 19 seats, leaving both major camps short of the 61 needed for a majority.

The result has exposed a fundamental contradiction. Arab citizens have exercised their democratic rights in unprecedented numbers, only to see their votes portrayed as a security threat. Likud has accused Arab parties of stealing the election, despite no publicly established evidence of systematic fraud on the scale alleged.

This backlash follows an earlier attempt to disqualify the Joint List and Ra’am from the election. Israel’s Supreme Court overturned those decisions, ruling that the evidence did not meet the legal threshold for exclusion. Netanyahu has also signaled an intention to target Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, through a campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood.

The message is clear: Palestinian political participation is acceptable only when it does not challenge the existing order.

And what of the supposedly moderate alternative, Eisenkot?

Eisenkot’s disagreements with Netanyahu concern strategy, leadership and the conduct of the war. They do not amount to a fundamental rejection of the doctrine underpinning Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

In 2008, Eisenkot, then head of Israel’s Northern Command, defended a strategy of disproportionate force modelled on the destruction of Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood during the 2006 Lebanon war. Known as "the Dahiya Doctrine," it seeks deterrence by devastating civilian infrastructure and imposing collective costs on entire communities.

Eisenkot was deputy chief of staff during the 2014 Gaza war, in which 2,251 Palestinians were killed according to the figures cited in the original account. As chief of staff in 2018, he oversaw the military during the "Great March of Return" protests, when 189 Palestinians were killed that year, according to the U.N.

After Oct. 7, he joined Israel’s war Cabinet. His subsequent endorsement of the doctrine’s application to Lebanon confirmed that it remained central to his military thinking. So on what grounds is he considered moderate? A disagreement over how to wage war is not a rejection of the principles that make it possible. The same double standard governs Israel’s democratic claims.

Jewish parties compete for power, while Arab parties face accusations of disloyalty, attempts at disqualification and threats of legal suppression. When Palestinian citizens vote in record numbers, their success is presented as a danger to the state.

Eisenkot and the opposition now face a test: Will they accept Arab parties as legitimate political partners, or preserve the exclusion that has long defined Israeli politics?

In September 2025, the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. That finding cannot be reduced to a dispute between Netanyahu and his rivals.

Israel’s crisis is not simply about who occupies the prime minister’s office. It is about a political order that demands democratic legitimacy while denying Palestinians equal standing and invoking security to justify collective punishment.

Replacing Netanyahu will mean little if the doctrine he represents survives. Without a fundamental break with that system, a new government may offer a different face, but not a different course.