Yossi Alpher — November 2, 2026
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. Last week, on election eve, you speculated on the deeper trends that were emerging. And now that the elections are behind us, any corrections? Additional trends? New directions?
A. The first and most obvious correction to our understanding of the core issues is that polling in Israel is incredibly inaccurate. All the polls missed the outcome. There are lots of theories as to the reasons, including the deliberate use of deceptive polls to affect voting. But we can begin by ruling out polls — even exit polls — as a reliable tool for managing or even understanding Israeli politics.
Secondly — and this point is a derivative of the first — the huge voter turnout by the Arab voters of Israel is arguably not just a surprise that nearly all the polls missed, but a strategic surprise. The new reality of nineteen Arab members of Knesset is obliging everyone to begin conceiving of coalitions and political agendas differently. No longer is it just the Netanyahu bloc versus the Eizenkot-led change bloc. Now there is a definable Arab bloc that cannot and should not be ignored.
Q. What did we learn about leadership?
A. We learned (and will continue to learn in the days and weeks ahead) that Prime Minister Netanyahu, dirty tricks and all — and despite his responsibility for the October 7 massacre and the subsequent mismanaged three-year war — is the smartest politician around. As for opposition leader Eizenkot, we are still learning, but at a minimum we can say that he is anti-charisma and has disappointed as a vote-getter. One Israeli commentator called him “the Israeli version of Kamala Harris.” Nor have any of his fellow opposition leaders emerged in this election as an alternative high-profile vote-getter.
It must be acknowledged that it is not just Netanyahu’s leadership but Likud leadership that delivered those 27 MKs. How else to explain the Likud sweep of the northern border periphery and the development towns of the Gaza periphery where Israelis have suffered so heavily in the past three years of Likud-mismanaged war? Notably, it is Netanyahu who engineered Likud election strategies, often by keeping his outgoing Knesset entourage in the shadows in favor of grassroots Likudniks.
Apropos leadership in this election, the virtual collapse of the Shas Sephardic ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) party — down from 11 to six MKs — is being blamed on veteran leader Aryeh Deri, a major figure whose political career may now be over. It appears that Deri failed to maneuver through the contradiction generated by Ashkenazi-led Haredi refusal to serve in the IDF at a time of national need on the one hand, and the natural inclination of at least some Shas supporters to, indeed, do national service on the other.
This contradiction is particularly poignant now that it emerges that Eizenkot, in his best-case scenario for forming a coalition, will need to poach some Haredim away from Likud’s coalition bloc and, to make that option attractive, back off from threatening that they do military service or face huge budgetary-financial penalties. So much for that election promise.
Q. Three external actors in Israel’s elections rate mention here: Trump, Iran, and Qatar.
A. How much two last-minute Trump endorsements of Netanyahu affected the outcome we do not really know. But the very fact of those endorsements is an unusual and very troubling feature of these elections. The ‘partnership’ with Trump, in war and in peace, is troubling to say the least.
Over the past three years, we have become a base for the US armed forces. We are no longer free to decide on the use of force against our enemies. And the American president tries to decide our elections. All this, while powerful forces in Congress react to Israel’s war crimes by seeking to end US military assistance. Yet most Israelis favor this US president because he likes us (most of the time).
This will be, or at least should be, remembered as a low point in Israel-US relations and in Israel’s sovereign independence.
Iran’s relevance, and more precisely the relevance of war with Iran, was reportedly exploited by Netanyahu in his last-ditch attempts to generate some level of warfare as a kind of emergency backdrop or backstop, needed either to postpone elections (lest he lose) or to boost his image as a critical wartime leader. Exactly what happened here, and the commendable role IDF Chief of Staff Zamir played in preventing a pre-election war, will hopefully one day become known to the public.
As for Qatar, in another murky and apparently highly-exaggerated affair, Netanyahu, former best friend of Qatar in the Gaza context, has cultivated intimations that Qatar tried to funnel funds to potential Arab voters. Shin Bet head Zini, Netanyahu’s messianic pick for the job, is somehow involved. Ultimately nothing seems to have happened. One day here too we may learn the details.
Back to Iran. There is broad anticipation that Trump, after his own mid-term elections, will, in concert with Netanyahu, relaunch war against Iran’s leadership, its nuclear project, and its hegemonic claims in the Hormuz Strait. Like an attack on Iran before Israel’s election, a post-election attack could, in view of the Netanyahu-Eizenkot deadlock, facilitate an appeal by Netanyahu to close ranks around him in a unity government that would ostensibly show Israel’s enemies that it is united.
Yet, in reality it could trigger a dangerous regional reaction, labeling Israel as a chronic war-monger. In the words of Arab-affairs expert Michael Milstein, “the lack of a decisive [election] outcome strengthens the post-October 7 global assessment that Israel is losing its equilibrium, particularly regarding the use of force.”
Q. This brings us to post-election scenarios. Who can form a viable coalition and who will be in it?
A. How to get to 61 MKs? Eizenkot starts with 48, Netanyahu with 53.
Netanyahu could try to poach Orthodox right-wingers (and there are many) from the three right-wing parties — led by Eizenkot, Bennett and Liberman — in the anti-Netanyahu bloc, thereby giving him 61 MKs. Eizenkot and his allies could try to exploit Shas’s election trauma and recruit it, though this would still leave them short of 61.
Either bloc could try to recruit the Arab Raam party with its eight MKs, including the squeaky-clean retired police general Yoav Segalovich. Here the anti-Arab legacy, both racist and political, of both major blocs would have to be overcome. Netanyahu is cynical enough to look for original ways to bribe his naysayers; Eizenkot would have to overcome Liberman, who refuses to join a coalition not only with Arabs but with Haredim and, for good measure, with Netanyahu as well.
These glum prospects bring us to the national unity option. What is convenient mathematically is that the Arabs and Liberman could be left out. But who would lead the unity coalition, Netanyahu or Eizenkot? Rotation? Would Trump weigh in here, too? How many embarrassing compromises would each side have to make? Clearly this would be an unnatural union, particularly in view of Netanyahu’s long history of undermining unity-coalition partners.
President Herzog has a role to play here. Does he charge, first, Eizenkot or Netanyahu with forming a coalition? The former got fewer votes than the latter, but he can claim to represent a potential coalition, including the Arabs, of 67. On the other hand, Netanyahu can claim the Likud ‘won’ the election. Or will Herzog press the two of them to form a unity coalition?
Note that Israel’s president does not have the image of an arm-twister. This, at a time when forceful leadership is badly needed.
Q. Are new elections the default option?
A. I’m afraid so. This could happen within about a year, once the contradictions embedded in all the futile efforts to form a coalition of any sort have played out.
Q. Last word?
A. This election has introduced the realistic option of Jewish-Arab cooperation in governing Israel. Raam’s Mansour Abbas and others are open advocates of this direction. Politically, Abbas and Eizenkot are capable of agreeing.
This is the order of the day: the way forward for Israel. This is the alternative to a racist, ultra-nationalist, messianist Israel. Otherwise we shall see, very soon, more elections and more chaos, under the shadow of Trump and Iran.
Who will rise to the occasion?
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer.
