After the recent Oct. 27th election, Benjamin Netanyahu maintains a slim lead but falls short of the 61 seats needed to hold a parliamentary majority. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and its coalition won 53 seats according to reports from Israel’s Central Elections Committee on Wednesday morning, holding five seats over Gadi Eisenkot’s runner-up coalition.
Netanyahu’s continued domestic support sits awkwardly against a collapse in American approval. Pew Research Center polls show that 55 percent of Americans viewed Netanyahu favorably in 2022, but only 37 percent maintain that view in 2026. Meanwhile, hostility toward his leadership has risen from 42 to 60 percent over the same period.
It appears this mounting backlash is fueled by Netanyahu’s hawkish foreign policy and destruction of Gaza following Oct. 7th. As of this year, 59 percent of Americans report having little or no faith in Netanyahu to “do the right thing on world affairs,” and roughly half of Democrats believe that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinians. Sympathies for both groups have also shifted dramatically after 2023; Americans appear to hold more sympathy for Palestinians than Israelis regarding their ongoing conflict for the first time in recorded history.
Netanyahu’s government has also faced recent domestic protests and mounting dissent from the Israeli public, but it is driven by entirely different grievances. Internally, Netanyahu has received mass criticism for his security failures on October 7th and his refusal to accept independent investigations on the issue. Days before the election, thousands gathered in Tel Aviv to rally against Netanyahu and demand independent inquiries into the security failures that led to the Oct. 7th Hamas attacks. Among the demonstrators were leaders of various opposition parties, most notably Gadi Eisenkot. Eisenkot leads the center-right Yashir party and represents Netanyahu’s primary opposition. He has been very critical of Netanyahu’s “refusal” to take responsibility for his various military and economic shortcomings, citing Oct. 7th and “endless wars” as primary issues.
To Americans, who have watched their tax dollars fund the genocide of over 74,500 Palestinians and the decimation of nearly all civilian infrastructure in Gaza, these parties are practically indistinguishable. None of the major opposition parties have levied criticism toward Netanyahu regarding mass Palestinian civilian casualties or destruction in Gaza. None of the major parties support the establishment of a Palestinian state. The only possible exception is the Israeli Democratic Party, which acknowledges it as a distant, unspecified possibility. Notably, they remain aligned with Eisenkot’s anti-Palestine coalition. In terms of other international affairs, no major party has criticized militant action against Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Qatar, or Iran, citing only how these excursions have damaged Israel’s economy or international reputation. Both Netanyahu’s and Eisenkot’s coalitions also refuse to partner with Israel’s primarily Arab parties, despite their increasing electoral influence.
These extreme party positions represent a dramatic rightward shift in Israeli society. Support for Palestinian statehood has virtually collapsed, plummeting from 61 percent in 2012 to just 26 percent today, according to Gallup. Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem have similarly lost interest in a two-state solution. What’s more concerning is that seven out of ten Israelis support the forced displacement, or ‘relocation’ of Arab people out of Gaza, according to polls from the Jewish People Policy Institute.
There remains a fringe, left-wing resistance to mainstream thought in Israel. Among the protesters in Tel Aviv, hundreds gathered after the election to call for an Arab-Jewish government, championing slogans such as “freedom for all, from the river to the sea.”
Though the political contest between Netanyahu and Eisenkot has yet to be resolved, it is clear that the foreign policy objectives and resulting humanitarian crises cannot be reduced to a single administration. These issues reflect right-wing extremism across Israel’s political spectrum.
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