Israel’s election: The main issues in the words of the leading candidates

From judicial reform to conscription and the Palestinians, here’s where candidates stand on the key issues dominating the campaign.

For an election often billed as the most consequential in Israel’s history, many issues that outsiders might expect to divide the candidates are, in fact, points of consensus among the frontrunners.

None of the leading contenders in Tuesday’s election has questioned the case for unleashing a genocide on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack of October ۷, ۲۰۲۳, or the wars that have followed, including the one on Iran. Nor have most candidates for the premiership offered a clear path towards implementing a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict that was envisaged in the ۱۹۹۰s, or towards an equitable settlement with the Palestinians whose territory Israel occupies.

Instead, the points of division centre almost exclusively on Israel’s internal politics and how voters see the future character of their country. The choice is between the hard-right government of incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unconstrained by the judicial oversight he has railed against, and the future outlined by the disparate coalition of his opponents, which promises a broadly similar policy agenda but within the confines of the law and without the more extreme elements of the current governing coalition.

So, what have the leading candidates said about the main issues?

The two-state solution

Despite having committed to working towards a two-state solution in the ۱۹۹۰s’ Oslo Accords, with many of their allies adjusting their policies towards Israel to reflect that commitment, few of the contenders in Tuesday’s election appear ready to honour it. Instead, their government stands widely accused of abetting the settler pogroms now raging across the West Bank, while supporting continued construction in the occupied territory in defiance of international law. This includes the E۱ settlement plan, which ministers openly boast will bury the two-state solution.

Here’s what some of the contenders have said:

• Likud party leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “We are going to fulfill our promise that there will be no Palestinian state; this place belongs to us.”
• Yashar party Gadi Eisenkot: “My position on the Palestinian issue has remained consistent: The principle of two states for two peoples is a mistake.”

• Religious Zionist party leader, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich: The next government should “destroy the idea of an Arab terror state; finally, formally and practically cancel the cursed Oslo Accords and get on the path of sovereignty, while encouraging migration both from Gaza and from Judea and Samaria [occupied West Bank]. There is no other long-term solution.”
• The Democrats leader Yair Golan: “We need to understand that Israeli society is still in trauma from October ۷. To make the galactic leap from the current situation to a two-state solution is impossible. It’s not enough to return to old formulas, we need to adjust our plans, our ideas, our perceptions. My concept is about civil separation and security responsibility.”

Haredi draft

The conscription of Israel’s growing ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, population into the army is an issue largely unique to Israel, and one whose prominence has grown as the human and economic costs of the wars in which many refuse to take part have mounted.

Netanyahu has continued to rely on the two main Haredi parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ), for support in the Knesset. They have in turn insisted that he pass legislation overturning the Supreme Court ruling of June ۲۵, ۲۰۲۴ and offering ultra-Orthodox youth a legislative shield against conscription.

Here is what leaders have said:

• Netanyahu after the arrest this month of about ۴۰ Haredim – plural for Haredi – for avoiding the draft: “We must preserve the world of Torah because it preserved us. These arrests are a deliberate attempt to harm the process of drafting Haredim without coercion.”
• Shas leader Aryeh Deri: “There will be no government in Israel with Shas’s support or participation unless the status of yeshiva [seminary] students is regulated.”
• Eisenkot: “That is what the upcoming election is about: Netanyahu’s draft-dodging government, or a government of conscription led by me.”
• Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Liberman: “Netanyahu is issuing an impassioned call against the arrest of draft evaders, once again proving that he is a hostage to the draft evaders – without them, he has no government.”

Judicial overhaul

Days after taking office in ۲۰۲۲, Netanyahu’s government unveiled a plan to curb the powers of Israel’s courts, which triggered months of mass protests in ۲۰۲۳ before the war on Gaza paused the fight.

The coalition has passed measures reshaping how judges are appointed, while in July a law stripped Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara of many of her powers, allowing the government to reject her legal advice and choose its own lawyers in court. Both are due to take effect after the election and most of the opposition has promised to reverse them.

The government has also boycotted Chief Justice Isaac Amit. Critics call it a deliberate assault on democracy by a prime minister embroiled in a long-running corruption trial of his own, while Justice Minister Yariv Levin says the election is a historic chance to finish the job.

Here are some of the contenders’ statements:

• Netanyahu: “Democracy is the rule of the people. It’s ‘we the people,’ not ‘we the judges … In Israel, [judicial reform] was completely derailed, and we have to bring it back. We don’t have to crush the judiciary, but we have to make sure it doesn’t crush the legislative branch, the Knesset or the executive branch of government.”
• Together alliance co-leader, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett: “I want to be clear. We will cancel all the legal revolution laws immediately upon the convening of the Knesset.”

October ۷ inquiry

While the killing of more than ۷۴,۰۰۰ people in Gaza has been entirely absent during the campaign of the two main alliances, questions over political accountability for security failures ahead of and during the Hamas-led attack in ۲۰۲۳ have dominated this election cycle.

Inquiries into failings by the security services ahead of and during the Hamas-led attack led to the resignation of Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, announced in January ۲۰۲۵. They also fed a long, drawn-out and bitter fight with the prime minister that ended with the departure of Shin Bet head Ronen Bar in June last year.

However, despite recent news reports suggesting that Netanyahu was warned by both the UAE and Egypt ahead of the attack, and longstanding criticism of his policy of keeping Hamas in power in Gaza as a bulwark against the Palestinian Authority, no similar inquiry into his own alleged failings before October ۷ has happened.

Here are some of the leaders’ statements:

• Eisenkot: “Netanyahu was warned and did not act. A State Commission of Inquiry that we will establish will investigate the disaster. The heads of the systems took responsibility and resigned long ago. We will not allow the master of evaders to escape the truth.”
• Netanyahu: The prime minister told the Knesset that his government “wants to establish a commission of inquiry with as broad public support as possible” and not one dismissed by what he claimed is “at least half the country”. The proposed government-led inquiry never reached its final reading and has been deferred to the next session.