Israel voted for Israel: Why Gaza wasn’t on the ballot

Despite genocide, regional war and isolation, Israel’s election revealed little appetite for political alternatives.

Palestinian boys stand amid the rubble after a building was hit overnight by an Israeli strike west of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, [AFP]

Israel’s parliament remains in deadlock .

After one of the highest voter turnouts in decades, neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition nor the self-styled Zionist opposition alliance secured the 61 seats required for a parliamentary majority in the October 27 polls.

list 1 of 4 Israel election result shows no overall majority as vote count complete

list 2 of 4 ‘Arab voice doesn’t count’: Jewish Israeli blocs reject Palestinian support

list 3 of 4 Coalition wrangling, a second election: How Israel could break the deadlock

list 4 of 4 Why is Netanyahu accusing Palestinian Israeli parties of fraud?

Netanyahu’s camp came first, with 53 seats, five more than the main opposition bloc. The Arab parties surged to a record 19 seats but have been relegated to merely observing coalition negotiations.

Viewed from a distance, the results could appear startling.

The judicial reforms ushered in at the start of Netanyahu’s government term in 2022 provoked the largest street protests in Israel’s history, while the prime minister himself is still embroiled in a corruption trial dating back to 2019. Alleged failures ahead of the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, that triggered Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have still to be reckoned with, despite overwhelming public pressure to do so. Moreover, the genocide has led to growing international isolation, while also providing the pretext for multiple attacks on countries across the region – the latest of which, undertaken with the United States on Iran in February, continues to roil energy markets around the world.

Nevertheless, roughly 2.38 million Israelis on Tuesday made the journey to the polls to back Netanyahu’s coalition, led by his Likud party, while some 2.21 million cast their ballots for the opposition alliance.

Between the two, little space was given to examine the multiple war crimes Israel stands accused of having carried out in Gaza, where Israeli attacks have killed more than 74,500 people and left much of it in ruins, or government complicity in the surging violence and pogroms in the occupied West Bank, where a United Nations commission of inquiry said on Monday that Israel had been committing crimes against humanity, including extermination, torture and rape.

Gaza did not make the ballot

Analysts said the fact that neither Gaza nor the West Bank were a deciding factor in how Israelis voted on Tuesday was largely because they already represented an area of broad agreement across both alliances.

Instead, the election was fought on largely internal issues: the power of Israel’s courts, whether members of the ultra-Orthodox minority should be exempted from military service, and whether the government’s alleged culpability in missing the warnings of the October 2023 attack should be examined.

Leading Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani said the issues were pitched to the Israeli public along broadly similar lines to those used by the politicians enacting the policies.

“I don’t think the problem is simply that people are uninformed or disengaged,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Many Israelis know that Gaza has been devastated, even though they are exposed to a very selective representation of that devastation. But knowing something and recognising its moral and political implications are different things,” Shenhav-Shahrabani added, providing one explanation for the absence of empathy displayed by many Israelis in the face of the widely reported suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.

“Ordinary people, who love their families, care for their friends, and consider themselves decent human beings, can participate in or acquiesce to a political order that produces immense suffering for others,” he said.

For Shenhav-Shahrabani, there has been “a powerful mechanism of denial” at work. “Not necessarily denial of the facts, but denial of their meaning,” he said.

A Palestinian man walks through damaged makeshift shelters after an Israeli strike hit a nearby building the previous night, west of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, on October 30, 2026 [AFP]

Security on the agenda

For Netanyahu’s supporters, however, this denial could be traced to something more personal.

“The Likud is a tribe, or perhaps a cult and, as far as they are concerned, Dear Leader is always right,” Israeli analyst Ahron Bregman said of the prime minister’s base, which has sustained his rule for a cumulative 19 years – roughly a quarter of Israel’s entire existence.

“For them, the enemy, straight after the Arabs, is the left, and they would vote for Netanyahu regardless of his faults,” added Bregman, a senior teaching fellow at King’s College London.

For much of this electorate, the vote was less a judgement on the government’s conduct than a choice between competing claims to political legitimacy – or as Israeli academic Roi Zur put it, a contest over “the heart and soul of democracy” and the future of Jewish and Israeli identity.

“The most important thing, I think, for turnout among Netanyahu’s supporters is the understanding, or the belief, that the alternative coalition would be weaker on security,” said Zur, an expert on voter behaviour who teaches at Essex University.

What Netanyahu had been particularly successful in doing, he continued, was creating “this campaign of fear and the belief that he is the only one who can deal with this situation, that he is the only strong enough prime minister”.

“The idea that Netanyahu is the only and the strongest leader that can lead Israel through these recent times and the post-October 7 war.”

War and occupation, according to Shenhav-Shahrabani, were not choices to be made on the ballot paper.

Instead, they had become the prism through which, over decades, Israelis had come to view “security, citizenship, and the very meaning of democracy”.

“That is why replacing Netanyahu, important as it may be, would not by itself resolve the deeper problem.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses supporters on October 28 [AFP]

尽管经历了种族灭绝、地区战争和孤立，以色列的选举结果显示，人们对政治替代方案缺乏兴趣。

在加沙地带北部贾巴利亚以西，一栋建筑物在夜间遭到以色列空袭后，巴勒斯坦男孩站在废墟中。[法新社]

以色列议会仍处于僵局。

在数十年来最高的投票率之一之后，无论是总理本杰明·内塔尼亚胡的联合政府还是自称的犹太复国主义反对派联盟，在10月27日的选举中均未获得议会多数所需的61个席位。

以色列选举结果（共4份，第1份）显示，计票已完成，未出现绝对多数的情况。

列表 2/4 “阿拉伯人的声音无关紧要”：以色列犹太人集团拒绝巴勒斯坦人的支持

列表 3/4：联合政府内部纷争、第二次选举：以色列如何打破僵局

问题 4（共 4 题）：为什么内塔尼亚胡指责巴勒斯坦裔以色列政党存在欺诈行为？

内塔尼亚胡阵营以53个席位位居榜首，比主要反对派联盟多出5个席位。阿拉伯政党席位激增至创纪录的19个，但只能作为观察员参与组阁谈判。

从远处看，结果可能会令人震惊。

内塔尼亚胡2022年上任伊始推行的司法改革引发了以色列历史上规模最大的街头抗议，而总理本人至今仍深陷于一起可追溯至2019年的腐败案审判中。尽管公众舆论强烈要求追究责任，但以色列在2023年10月7日哈马斯领导的袭击事件发生前所犯下的种种失误，至今仍未得到清算。这场袭击事件最终引发了以色列对加沙地带巴勒斯坦人的种族灭绝战争。此外，这场种族灭绝导致以色列日益遭受国际孤立，同时也为以色列对该地区多个国家发动袭击提供了借口——其中最近一次是今年2月与美国联合对伊朗发动的袭击，至今仍在扰乱全球能源市场。

尽管如此，周二仍有约 238 万以色列人前往投票站支持内塔尼亚胡领导的利库德集团联盟，而约有 221 万人投票支持反对派联盟。

在这两者之间，几乎没有篇幅去审视以色列被指控在加沙犯下的多项战争罪行。以色列的袭击已造成超过 74,500 人死亡，并将加沙的大部分地区夷为平地。也没有篇幅去审视以色列政府在被占领的西岸地区日益猖獗的暴力和种族清洗中所扮演的共谋角色。联合国调查委员会周一表示，以色列在西岸犯下了反人类罪行，包括灭绝、酷刑和强奸。

加沙没有获得投票资格。

分析人士表示，加沙和西岸都没有成为以色列人周二投票的决定性因素，这主要是因为这两个地区已经代表了两个联盟之间广泛的共识。

相反，这次选举主要围绕内部问题展开：以色列法院的权力、极端正统派少数群体成员是否应该免服兵役，以及政府是否应该审查其在未能收到 2023 年 10 月袭击警告方面所应承担的责任。

以色列著名社会学家耶胡达·申哈夫-沙赫拉巴尼表示，这些问题向以色列公众提出的措辞与制定政策的政治家们所使用的措辞大致相同。

“我认为问题不仅仅是人们缺乏信息或漠不关心，”他告诉半岛电视台。

“许多以色列人都知道加沙遭受了重创，尽管他们接触到的只是经过筛选的灾情报道。但知道某件事和认识到其道德和政治意义是两回事，”申哈夫-沙赫拉巴尼补充道，这解释了为什么许多以色列人面对加沙巴勒斯坦人遭受的苦难时缺乏同情心，而这些苦难已被广泛报道。

他说：“热爱家庭、关心朋友、自认为是体面人的普通人，可能会参与或默许一种给其他人带来巨大痛苦的政治秩序。”

申哈夫-沙赫拉巴尼认为，存在一种“强大的否认机制”。他说：“这并非否认事实本身，而是否认事实的意义。”

2026年10月30日，在加沙地带北部贾巴利亚以西，一名巴勒斯坦男子走过被以色列空袭损毁的临时住所。前一天晚上，以色列的空袭击中了附近的一栋建筑物。[法新社]

安全问题提上议程

然而，对于内塔尼亚胡的支持者来说，这种否认可能源于更私人的原因。

以色列分析家阿伦·布雷格曼在谈到总理的支持者时说：“利库德集团是一个部落，或者说是一个邪教，在他们看来，亲爱的领袖永远是对的。”这个支持者已经维持了总理累计19年的统治——大约是以色列整个历史的四分之一。

“对他们来说，阿拉伯人之后最大的敌人就是左派，无论内塔尼亚胡有什么缺点，他们都会投票给他，”伦敦国王学院高级教学研究员布雷格曼补充道。

对于这部分选民来说，这次投票与其说是对政府行为的评判，不如说是在相互竞争的政治合法性主张之间做出选择——或者正如以色列学者罗伊·祖尔所说，这是一场关于“民主的核心和灵魂”以及犹太人和以色列人身份未来的较量。

“我认为，对于内塔尼亚胡的支持者来说，最重要的因素是他们理解或相信，替代联盟在安全问题上会比较弱，”埃塞克斯大学研究选民行为的专家祖尔说。

他继续说道，内塔尼亚胡尤其成功地制造了“这种恐惧氛围，让人们相信只有他才能应对这种情况，只有他才足够强大”。

“内塔尼亚胡是唯一能够带领以色列度过近期的难关以及10月7日战争之后的局势的、也是最强大的领导人。”

申哈夫-沙赫拉巴尼认为，战争和占领不应该成为选票上的选择。

相反，几十年来，它们成为了以色列人看待“安全、公民身份和民主的真正含义”的棱镜。

“因此，尽管替换内塔尼亚胡很重要，但这本身并不能解决更深层次的问题。”

以色列总理本杰明·内塔尼亚胡于10月28日向支持者发表讲话 [法新社]