Researchers present three scenarios for Israel following the Knesset elections

Los Angeles/DNA – Israel is set to go to the polls on Oct. 27 to elect the members of the 26th Knesset. It is the first vote since the Hamas attacks of three years ago. Governance experts have now identified three possible post-election scenarios.

“The first scenario is one in which Israel continues to maximize security at the expense of both domestic and international popularity,” the researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute and Berlin’s Hertie School write in their new report “Israeli Governance Performance: The 2026 Elections, Democracy and Future Scenarios for Palestine.”

In this scenario, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “(or an ideological successor) continues to privilege military deterrence across an expanding set of fronts. Relations with Turkey could emerge as the most critical and potentially most dangerous in that regard.”

At the same time, in this scenario, given the growing opposition among the public in the U.S. and Europe to aid for Israel, one of the country’s primary sources of support could dry up. “This would leave Israel in a position where military spending and public goods provision may be mutually exclusive, potentially forcing a dramatic reorientation or a severe quality-of-life decline,” the report notes.

The second scenario envisions Israel as a country attempting to rebuild its domestic and international standing, even if this results in a fragile, difficult-to-manage government.

The third scenario, the one the study’s authors consider most likely, is that Israel will continue to muddle through, avoiding both breakdown and renewal, with prolonged paralysis the price. A situation of this kind would not necessarily trigger an immediate crisis, but it would cause the long-standing problems to worsen.

Creating a Palestinian state is not an issue in the election campaign

The issue of the creation of a Palestinian state is conspicuously absent from Israel’s election campaign ahead of the Oct. 27 elections. Following the events of Oct. 7, 2023, trust and hope among Israelis regarding coexistence between the two peoples have plummeted. The events included the massacre perpetrated by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the country’s southern kibbutzim, communities known for their humanitarian initiatives supporting Gaza’s residents.

Surveillance footage from these socialist agricultural communities, along with videos posted by the terrorists themselves, revealed that the infiltrators included Gazan citizens who regularly worked on kibbutz farms, in the city of Sderot and in other communities that came under attack. Survivors recognized individuals in the footage whom they had considered friends — people with whom they used to share morning coffee — only to see them looting homes and hauling away Israeli civilians to hold as hostages in future exchanges for Palestinian prisoners.

The tragedy, experienced by Israelis as a profound personal betrayal, has inevitably influenced their voting intentions. Kibbutz residents, historically left-wing voters, have told national media outlets that their ideological shift is not so much toward the right, but rather toward a focus on survival, leading them to favour candidates who promise greater security — security that the Netanyahu government and the defence forces failed to provide.

The events have led the main election candidates to adopt similar positions: namely, the rejection of the two-state solution. “Neither bloc has proposed meaningful change in the West Bank or Gaza. Rather than advocating for a change from the hardline Netanyahu approach, significant elements of the opposition camp broadly support continued settlement expansion,” the researchers write. “Any shift toward the two-state solution would, in the current configuration, require both external pressure and a significant shift in domestic political will.”

The new report “Israeli Governance Performance: The 2026 Elections, Democracy and Future Scenarios for Palestine” is based on the 2026 Berggruen Governance Index (BGI) and can be downloaded here.

___

This text and the accompanying material (photos and graphics) are an offer from the Democracy News Alliance, a close co-operation between Agence France-Presse (AFP, France), Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA, Italy), The Canadian Press (CP, Canada), Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa, Germany) and PA Media (PA, U.K.). All recipients can use this material without the need for a separate subscription agreement with one or more of the participating agencies. This includes the recipient’s right to publish the material in own products.

The DNA content is an independent journalistic service that operates separately from the other services of the participating agencies. It is produced by editorial units that are not involved in the production of the agencies’ main news services. Nevertheless, the editorial standards of the agencies and their assurance of completely independent, impartial and unbiased reporting also apply here.