Today is still October 7, 2023 in Israel. And it will probably still be the same next Tuesday, when the country elects a new parliament for the first time after the greatest catastrophe in the history of the Jewish people since the Shoah. A trauma must be dealt with “not as a historical matter, but as a current force,” wrote Sigmund Freud in his 1914 essay “Remember, Repeat and Work Through.”
For the patient, the trauma repeats itself “not as a memory, but as an act”. Israel, it seems, is still experiencing the shock caused by the attack by thousands of terrorists and ordinary citizens from Gaza: the unrestricted killing, torture and rape.
The uncertainty continues and with it the question of how this could have happened and whether such mass murder can be prevented from happening again. This is also the question of the fate of the man who has ruled the Jewish state longer than anyone else and who stands for the principle of “security through strength” like no other politician – Benjamin Netanyahu.
How the election will turn out is unclear. One thing is certain: every scenario is also connected to this day, after which there seems to be no tomorrow.
There are three large blocks whose balance will decide the choice. On the one hand, there is Netanyahu's government coalition made up of his conservative Likud party, the orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, as well as the equally religious but more militant forces from the spectrum of the settler movement. The Otzma Jehudit party of Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Zionut ha-Datit of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
On the other side is an informal alliance of parties that want to replace Netanyahu. The spectrum ranges from conservatives such as the religious ex-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the secular, Russian-born ex-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to left-wing liberals and leftists, represented primarily by the television journalist Jair Lapid and the former deputy chief of general staff Jair Golan.
Its figurehead is a man who only recently entered politics: Gadi Eisenkot, 66 years old, chief of general staff of the army from 2015 to 2019 and in many ways the exact opposite of Netanyahu.
While the permanent prime minister impresses with his power of words and his powerful formulas, Eisenkot speaks modestly and simply. The former is a professor's child with European ancestry, the son of one of the most brilliant historians of the Israeli conservatives, who were long marginalized by the state's founding social democratic generation. The other worked his way up from the lowest rank to commander-in-chief and grew up in humble circumstances.
His parents immigrated from Morocco. They therefore belonged to a section of Israeli society that was marginalized in a completely different way, the Jews from Arab countries, who were denied leading roles for a long time, even when they had already overtaken those of European descent in numbers. But this duel is truly fateful not because of these opposites, but because of the common history that connects these parts of Israel's history.
The fact that the conservative Likud was able to lead governments for the first time in the 1970s and then more and more often was primarily due to the oriental Jews. Their historical experience as a weak minority in Islamic states seemed to confirm what right-wing European Zionists had already argued in the 1920s: we can only be free if we are strong.
But since October 7, the country has been divided over whether Netanyahu is a guarantor of security or a risk. According to surveys, security and war are the most important issues for Israeli citizens, just ahead of economic concerns caused by the huge increase in consumer prices. In a study by the respected Israel Democracy Institute a few weeks ago, 68 percent of Jewish Israelis described the events of October 7th as a central factor in their voting decision.
As the candidates fight for votes, Ronen Bar, who headed the domestic intelligence agency Shabak when Hamas attacked on October 7, is in court. Netanyahu has primarily blamed him for the disaster, something Bar is now defending himself against in a defamation trial. In recent weeks he has detailed how he allegedly warned the prime minister more than 20 times in the months leading up to October 7 about a dramatic action by Hamas and a multi-front war.
It was the time when Netanyahu was pushing ahead with his judicial reform, which would have stripped the country's Supreme Court of an important part of its independence and, in the eyes of critics, threatened Israeli democracy. There was also the suspicion that Netanyahu wanted to use the judicial restructuring to protect himself from the end of his career through a conviction in the corruption trial that had been going on for years.
Hundreds of thousands demonstrated at the time. Many observers warned that the disunity could provide Israel's enemies with an opportunity to attack. The accusation that Netanyahu thought first about securing his power and only then about the security of the state is the most dangerous accusation made by his critics. Eisenkot is campaigning with him when he calls for an examination of October 7th and its background.
In the war that followed the massacre, Eisenkot's son Gal was killed as a soldier by a Hamas booby trap at the age of 25. As a candidate, his father rarely speaks about this loss. In addition to his origins and his military experience, this makes him particularly credible. His party is called Jashar, which can be translated as both “straightforward” and “honest.”
The combination of military profile and the appearance of authenticity is probably what put Eisenkot's opposition alliance in the lead in the last polls with 54 seats over Netanyahu's coalition with 49 seats. But this means that both sides lack the 61 of 120 seats in the Knesset that are needed to form and secure a government.
That is why the Israeli Arab parties, the more left-wing United List and the religious Raam, could become particularly influential with their expected 14 seats. Eisenkot has ruled out a government with Arab ministers, but not a minority government with the toleration of the Arab parties. This would at least allow him to withdraw the parts of the judicial reform that have already been decided and take a more conciliatory course in the negotiations over Gaza.
Eisenkot is rather skeptical about a two-state solution, which currently does not have a majority in Israel. But at least he has made it clear that he wants to take more decisive action against attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages in the West Bank.
President Yitzchak Herzog, who will be responsible for giving the order to form a government, appears to be aiming for a coalition without Arab votes - apparently a unity government made up of forces from both camps - possibly with a presidential pardon for the incumbent prime minister in his trial on suspicion of corruption.
Israel is therefore heading towards the question of which scenario seems to be the safest option: a government that also depends on Arab votes, or a pardon for the prime minister under whom October 7th occurred. It won't be an easy choice.
