Israel Elections 2026: Why Israel's upcoming vote is not the most important

Night after night, Danny Kushmaro introduces the election segment by calling them the most fateful elections in Israel’s history. And he is not alone. “Israel’s most important elections” or “Israel’s most fateful elections” has become a refrain of this campaign.

Kohelet cautions against romanticizing the good old days. Here’s a related lesson for Tuesday’s election: don’t assume that the current one is more fateful or important than all those that came before. That would be an unwise assumption.

Every election feels like the most fateful and important one. Ever. But perspective is needed.

How 'fateful' elections turns political battles into existential wars and why does that matter? Because calling this the most important and fateful election ever turns the political competition, the battle between the pro-Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs, into nothing less than an existential matter.

Defeat becomes harder to regard as a setback that can be corrected next time. Instead, it begins to sound like something the country cannot survive. And that can make accepting the outcome harder.

Therein lies the problem. Since Naftali Bennett formed his government in 2021, Israel has struggled with more than the question of who should govern. It has struggled with whether the losing side will give the other side a chance to do so.

Before Bennett’s government was even sworn in, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branded its formation “the greatest election fraud.” He meant broken campaign promises, not stolen ballots. But the message cast a government formed legitimately through the parliamentary process as fraudulent and, therefore, illegitimate.

From the minute Bennett’s government took office, the opposition worked tirelessly to bring it down. The main arena was the Knesset, where the coalition’s slim majority made every vote consequential.

As a result, the opposition sometimes voted against legislation it supported, believing it would weaken the government. In recordings published in May 2022, Likud MK Miri Regev defended voting against measures benefiting soldiers and vulnerable groups because the overriding objective was to topple the coalition.

The government spent much of its short life fighting for survival.

Then Netanyahu won the 2022 election and formed his hard-right government. Suddenly, the shoe was on the other foot.

Yair Lapid conceded the election and arranged an orderly handover. But as opposition to the judicial overhaul brought masses into the streets, the language of illegitimacy crept in again.

For instance, at a massive demonstration in Tel Aviv in April 2023, former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Yuval Diskin said that while the government had been elected legally, it was morally illegitimate because of its “appalling composition and reprehensible actions.”