Israel's October 27 election — its first general vote since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks that killed 1,139 people — is being fought almost entirely on a single axis: who can project the most force against Palestinians. The genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, is not a policy question in this campaign. It is the baseline assumption from which every candidate operates. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is running on the claim that he alone can secure Israel, despite documented intelligence failures before October 7. Reports surfaced last month that he received separate advance warnings from Egypt's intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan — warnings Netanyahu denies. His two main rivals have called him "unfit," but polling shows the allegations have not moved the needle. As Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group puts it: "Israelis in general still see Netanyahu as kind of the guy on security. And more to the point, they don't really see an alternative." The rightward shift predates October 7 but has accelerated dramatically since. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — sanctioned by multiple Western countries — told Ynet the army should "go to war" in the occupied West Bank and "do there what we did in Gaza." His electoral ally Moshe Feiglin told the Jerusalem Post that "the enemy is Gaza, not Hamas," calling for annexation and declaring that "the baby that will be born tomorrow in Gaza will do exactly the same" as the 2023 attackers. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, previously convicted of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organisation, now has aspirations to become defence minister. As analyst Ahron Bregman of King's College London observes: "This is madness. But that's contemporary Israel." The structural mechanism here is not simply that extremists exist — it is that the Overton window has shifted so far that multiple parties across the political spectrum advocate Palestinian expulsion from Gaza. Palestinian analyst Ahmed Najar calls these not "stray comments" but an electoral message portraying Palestinians as "not a people with rights, but a demographic and security problem to be expelled, conquered or destroyed." Meanwhile, Palestinian citizen of Israel Sami Abu Shehadeh was forced to withdraw from the election over remarks about the Gaza war, while far-right leaders face no consequences for openly genocidal rhetoric. Israel's expansionist posture is hardening into official doctrine. Officials now brazenly invoke "Greater Israel" based on biblical claims. The country continues to occupy Palestinian and Syrian land, has expanded into southern Lebanon, and shows diminishing regard for international law or neighbour sovereignty. A June survey by the Mitvim institute found Israeli public support for military solutions and rejection of resolving the Palestinian issue — even as concern grows about international isolation. The human cost extends inward. Israel's Ministry of Defence reported nearly 30,000 soldiers and security personnel facing psychological trauma since the war began. The rehabilitation budget has surged 88 percent over three years to 10 billion shekels ($3.3 million), mostly for mental health and PTSD treatment. Israeli troops are stretched across six fronts of war. The society is war-weary but simultaneously demanding more force — a contradiction that no candidate is required to resolve. Netanyahu's main challenger, former army chief Gadi Eisenkot of the Yashar party, offers a different management style but not a fundamentally different trajectory. Lebanese residents in the south, where Israel conducts near-daily attacks and occupies large swathes of land, told Al Jazeera they expect little to change regardless of who wins. The election is a competition over degree, not direction — and the direction is annexation, expansion, and the erasure of Palestinian political claims from the Israeli political vocabulary entirely.
