If Netanyahu goes, does anything really change for Palestinians?

Four rival Israeli political movements have agreed to work together in a bid to unseat Israel’s longest serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The factions – the Yashar party, the Democrats, the Yisrael Beytenu party and the Together alliance – span different parts of Israel’s political spectrum but say they are united in their goal to “preserve and strengthen Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”.

The opposition grouping is in a close battle with a pro-Netanyahu coalition heading into the October 27 elections, recent polling indicated, although neither side appeared on track to win a parliamentary majority.

The election comes as Israel faces a series of domestic crises that are tearing at its social fabric, including questions over political accountability for alleged corruption and security failures, disputes over ultra-Orthodox military service and efforts to exclude Arab parties from political life. The country also faces growing backlash abroad, including from allies, over its continuing attacks on Gaza and Lebanon as well as settlements, which are illegal under international law, and settler pogroms in the occupied West Bank.

Analysts said the combination makes the upcoming elections among the most consequential in Israel’s history but even an opposition victory may bring only marginal change for Palestinians suffering record levels of settler violence and mass displacement. While the opposition alliance has taken Netanyahu to task personally, there is little daylight between them when it comes to Israel’s foundational policies in Gaza and the West Bank.

“Palestinians should not expect a fundamental change in Israeli policy if the Netanyahu bloc loses power,” said analyst Samer Jaber, a doctoral researcher specialising in political economy at Royal Holloway, University of London.

“The major political blocs share core positions on the Palestinian question, including support for the existing settlement structure, while the state institutions that formulate and implement policy would remain unchanged,” he added.

What is the anti-Netanyahu coalition?

The leaders of the four major Jewish-led opposition movements gathered on September 26 and signed a declaration promising not to attack each other in the run-up to the elections and to collaborate in forming a government after the vote.

In addition to Yair Lapid, who leads the official opposition in Israel’s Knesset, the meeting included Gadi Eisenkot, who heads the Yashar party; Naftali Bennett, who leads the Together alliance, cofounded by Lapid; Avigdor Lieberman, who heads Yisrael Beiteinu; and Yair Golan, who leads the Democrats. The declaration does not set out an official leader although Eisenkot is viewed as the opposition’s most likely candidate for prime minister. In a joint statement, the figures said defeating the current government was their “shared highest objective”.

Of the four opposition parties, Yashar is projected to be the strongest. A recent poll by Israel’s Channel 12 suggested Yashar would win 23 seats in parliament, the most of any party and more than the 21 seats projected for Netanyahu’s Likud.

Trailing is the Together alliance, projected to win 13 seats, followed by Yisrael Beiteinu and the Democrats, each projected to win nine.

That would give the opposition a combined 54 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, seven short of a majority. Netanyahu’s alliance, which includes several ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties, is projected to win 49 seats.

Arab-led parties, representing the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 20 percent of the population, are projected to win 13 seats, but most leaders of the Jewish-led opposition bloc have ruled out joining forces with them.

Roi Zur, an assistant professor at the University of Essex who leads a research project on Israeli parties’ political ideology and policy, said the anti-Netanyahu coalition has a chance to win if turnout is on its side, noting that several parties that do not “strictly oppose” the prime minister could fall below the 3.25 percent threshold to enter the Knesset, shaking up the balance.

“If these parties waste enough right-wing votes, the opposition might translate their support into power,” Zur told Al Jazeera. “But this might not be enough.”

Even if the opposition alliance manages to find a way to oust Netanyahu, it would likely be weak and incapable – or unwilling – to overhaul Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza, analysts said.

“An anti-Netanyahu government will most likely be a very disparate coalition with a very thin majority, if any, in the Knesset. That would make it difficult for such a government to agree on any substantial perceived concessions, such as withdrawing completely from Gaza,” Anders Persson, a political scientist specialising in the Israel-Palestine conflict, told Al Jazeera.

“It would also make it difficult for the international community to meaningfully pressure such a government because there will always be a fear that an anti-Netanyahu government could quickly collapse.”

‘Mostly right-wing’

While their positions vary, most leaders of the anti-Netanyahu alliance have taken hardline positions on Gaza and the West Bank that give Palestinians little reason for optimism.

Yashar’s Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief, has called the idea of a Palestinian state “delusional”, and he supports “strengthening” Israeli settlements. However, he opposes full Israeli annexation of the West Bank and has said he would dismantle smaller Israeli outposts not approved by the Israeli government. He also opposes the current government’s E1 settlement plan, which in effect would cut the West Bank in two. On Gaza, Eisenkot supports pursuing a United States-backed peace plan but only from a place of “strength” and only after “Hamas’s total disarmament”.

Israeli attacks across Gaza since the start of a “ceasefire” in October last year have killed nearly 1,500 Palestinians, bringing the overall death toll since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023 to more than 74,000, according to the enclave’s health officials.

Bennett, a former Likud member who served in multiple Netanyahu-led governments, has described himself as “more right-wing” than Netanyahu and advocated exceptionally draconian policies in Gaza, including once calling for a “shoot-to-kill” policy against Palestinians trying to cross into Israel. Bennett staunchly opposes a Palestinian state and supports settlement expansion although he has criticised Israeli settler pogroms against Palestinians. With respect to the future of Gaza, he wants Israeli forces to stay in the enclave until Hamas is disarmed and proposes that Egypt, rather than Turkiye or Qatar, should play a future security role.

Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party also supports settlement expansion, including the E1 plan. He backs annexing all of Area C of the West Bank – which constitutes 60 percent of the territory and is already under full Israeli control – while transferring control of other parts of the territory to Jordan. On Gaza, his party wants Israel to retain “freedom of action”, cut off water and electricity and eventually transfer governance to “an agreed-upon international entity”.

Golan’s Democrats party is the only one to support a form of two-state solution although it frames it as “responsible separation” that includes the “full demilitarisation” of the Palestinian state and complete Israeli security control of the Jordan Valley and other key areas. His party also supports complete demilitarisation for Gaza and a reconstruction process that involves regional states.

Palestinian lawyer and analyst Diana Buttu said each of the opposition leaders “has supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza” while backing settlements or not believing in full “equality for Palestinians”.

This orientation reflects hardening views within Israeli society itself.

According to a September Pew Research Center poll, only 17 percent of Israeli respondents said peaceful coexistence alongside an independent Palestinian state is possible. And according to an August survey by the Jewish People Policy Institute, 38 percent of Jewish Israeli participants favoured annexing the entire West Bank and more than half supported retaining the settlements as part of any future agreement on a Palestinian state.

‘Lessen the harms’

Nevertheless, some analysts said a new government could roll back or slow down some of the most “controversial and radical steps” of Israel’s current government, which includes far-right settlement proponents Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, and Bezalel Smotrich, the minister of finance. Smotrich last month said Israel should “go to war” in the West Bank and repeat what it “did in Gaza”.

Changes enacted by a new government would likely include suspending the E1 settlement project and cracking down “on extremist settler violence/terrorism in the West Bank”, said Dov Waxman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specialises in Israeli politics and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

A new government would also be expected to “allow more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza in a more predictable, consistent manner and for reconstruction to finally begin there”, he added.

Ehab Jabareen, a Palestinian political analyst and researcher in Israel, told Al Jazeera that a new government led by Netanyahu’s opponents would likely be “more receptive to US and international pressure”, giving more space for potential reconstruction in Gaza.

But overall, Jabareen said, such a government is unlikely to alter Israel’s overarching “paradigm” towards Palestinians. “I would expect the difference to be less about whether Israel maintains control over the Palestinians and more about how the control is exercised, legitimised and managed,” he said.

Amjad Iraqi, senior analyst for Israel and Palestine at the International Crisis Group, said any “shades of difference” would be meaningful for Palestinians who are currently “suffering nearly uninhibited brutality”.

“We’re at a point of mitigation,” Iraqi told Al Jazeera. “It is about trying to lessen the harms. Palestinians are not in a position to expect any kind of radical shift, but every life saved, every piece of land saved matters a lot for people on the ground.”