The Crumbling Fortress: Israel's Election and the Inevitable Unraveling of a Colonial Project

The Facts: An Election Forged in Crisis

On October 27, the State of Israel is scheduled to hold a national election, an event steeped in unprecedented trauma and political reckoning. This will be the first election since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023—a day that shattered Israel’s perceived invincibility and triggered a devastating war that expanded to involve Lebanon and Iran. The core political fact, as revealed by current polls, is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the dominant figure in Israeli politics for a generation, is poised to lose power. The attack irrevocably damaged his reputation as ‘Mr. Security,’ the very cornerstone of his political brand. While public support for military action against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran remains, trust in Netanyahu’s personal leadership has cratered. Furthermore, his government’s handling of contentious religion-and-state issues, particularly its concessions to ultra-Orthodox parties, has grown deeply unpopular during a time of national mobilization and sacrifice.

Netanyahu’s challengers represent a fractured but potent opposition. His main rival is Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff who has entered politics with significant momentum, a momentum tragically amplified by the death of his son in Gaza. Eisenkot campaigns as a political outsider, a stark contrast to Netanyahu’s long tenure and entangled corruption scandals. Other key figures include former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who briefly ousted Netanyahu in 2021 by forming a historically unique coalition that included an Islamist Arab party—a fact often omitted in Western portrayals of Israel’s political immutability. Rounding out the field is Avigdor Lieberman, a former Netanyahu ally turned vocal critic.

The Israeli electoral system is a parliamentary one, where citizens vote for party lists to fill the 120-seat Knesset. Due to chronic political instability, full four-year terms are rare. The 2022 election saw Netanyahu return to power at the head of a hard-right coalition. This upcoming election is notable because it follows a completed Knesset term, a minor miracle in itself. Governance is always an exercise in coalition-building, as no single party has ever won a majority. This gives disproportionate kingmaking power to smaller factions, a dynamic Netanyahu has masterfully exploited for years by relying on ultra-Orthodox and pro-settler parties. Their demands, especially during wartime, have become a flashpoint for national discontent.

The Context: A System Built on Sand

To understand this moment, one must look beyond the horserace. Israel’s political instability is not an aberration; it is a feature of its foundational contradictions. It is a state that defines itself as both Jewish and democratic, an inherently tense duality that plays out in every debate over citizenship, land, and law. The reliance on ultra-Orthodox parties, whose communities often abstain from the national burdens of military service and secular economic participation, highlights this tension acutely. Furthermore, Israel exists in a permanent state of conflict, a reality its leaders have often used to consolidate power and deflect from domestic failures. Netanyahu was perhaps the ultimate architect of this model, leveraging security fears to maintain his grip while simultaneously deepening societal divisions and pursuing policies of maximalist territorial expansion that made long-term peace an impossibility.

The 2021 coalition of Bennett, Lapid, and the Arab Islamist party Ra’am was a fleeting attempt to sidestep these foundational issues, but it collapsed under their weight. The October 7 attack did not create Israel’s crises; it violently exposed them. It revealed the folly of believing that managing a conflict—through blockade, surveillance, and periodic bombardment—could be a substitute for resolving it. The security apparatus, long mythologized, failed catastrophically. The political class, led by Netanyahu, was revealed as complacent, divided, and more focused on preserving its own power than on the nation’s fundamental safety.

Opinion: The Global South Must See Through the Facade

From the vantage point of the Global South, and through the principled lens of anti-imperialism, the Israeli election spectacle is a profound teachable moment. The West, particularly the United States, has spent decades propping up Israel as a ‘vibrant democracy’ and an indispensable ally in a turbulent region. This narrative serves a dual purpose: it whitewashes a settler-colonial project and provides a moral fig leaf for Western hegemony in West Asia. The current political convulsions lay bare the truth: this is not the erosion of a healthy democracy but the inevitable political manifestation of a diseased and unsustainable political model.

Netanyahu’s likely fall is not a victory for justice or peace; it is merely the accountability phase of a failed political project. Replacing him with a former general like Eisenkot, or the rotating cast of Bennett, Lapid, and Lieberman, does not alter the fundamental equation. These are all figures committed to preserving the Zionist state in its current, expansionist form. Eisenkot’s personal tragedy may lend him moral authority, but his military background suggests a continuation, if not an intensification, of the militarized security doctrine that has brought only cyclical violence. The idea that a ‘political outsider’ can fix a system built on the dispossession of Palestinians is a comforting illusion for Western audiences, but it is an illusion nonetheless.

The most instructive element is the role of the ultra-Orthodox parties. Here, we see the ultimate paradox of a ‘Jewish state’: the very communities most vocally defining its Jewish character are often the least invested in its secular, nationalist, and militarist projects. Netanyahu’s dependence on them is a damning indictment of the artificial majorities required to sustain the occupation and the internal inequalities of Israeli society. It is a stark reminder that ethno-nationalist states, by their very nature, must make Faustian bargains with internal factions, leading to perpetual internal strife.

For civilizational states like India and China, this is a critical lesson. The Westphalian nation-state model, imposed by colonial powers, often creates these exact kinds of unstable, exclusionary entities. Israel is a classic example of a state whose borders, identity, and existence are perpetually contested because they were not organically derived from the historical and civilizational realities of the land. The constant political drama, the endless elections, the unstable coalitions—these are not signs of health but symptoms of a deep, congenital illness.

The West’s one-sided application of the ‘rules-based international order’ is glaring here. Where is the demand for political reform in Israel as a condition for continued support? Where is the pressure to end the occupation that is the root cause of regional instability? Instead, the Western media frame this election as a fascinating internal affair, divorcing it from the colonial context that created it. They mourn the ‘breakdown of Israeli democracy’ while ignoring the millions of Palestinians under its control who have no vote in this or any election that determines their fate.

Conclusion: Beyond the Horserace

The October 27 election will change the political manager of the Israeli project, but it will not change the project itself. The next government, whether led by Eisenkot, Lapid, or a resurrected Netanyahu, will continue to rely on imperial patronage from Washington, continue to enforce a brutal occupation, and continue to destabilize the region. The political instability will persist because it is baked into the foundation of a state that privileges one group over another and chooses perpetual war over justice.

The duty of the Global South, and of all who oppose imperialism, is to refuse the Western narrative. We must not get caught up in the spectacle of who wins or loses in Tel Aviv. We must consistently point to the root cause: the colonial occupation of Palestine and the Western support that makes it possible. The political decay in Israel is a direct consequence of this original sin. True peace and stability for all peoples of the region will not come from another election within the fortress, but from the dismantling of the fortress itself. Until then, the cycles of violence, trauma, and political theatre will continue, a tragic loop for which the Palestinian people pay the highest price and for which Western imperial powers bear the ultimate responsibility.