Mada al-Carmel – The Arab Center for Applied Social Research has published a new position paper titled “Election Year in Israel: Portends of the Coming Political Battle,” authored by Dr. Mtanes Shihadeh, Director of Mada’s Israel Studies Program.
Israel has entered the year of parliamentary elections, whether they are held on time at the end of October 2026 or brought forward to an earlier date. The atmosphere has become dominated by electoral politics, party competition, and contentious disputes that were postponed during the war on Gaza.
This paper argues that the upcoming elections will mostly focus on domestic issues, including the fissures related to the status of the judiciary, the meanings of democracy in Israeli society, the position of the ultra-Orthodox parties and the ultra-Orthodox community in the political and social systems in Israel, and the issue of legislating an exemption for seminary students from military service while those related to the occupation, settlements, and control of Gaza will recede from public debate. As was the case before the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the Palestine question and the issues of occupation and settlements are no longer the focus of deep political disagreement between elites and the mainstream Israeli parties, as the events of October 7, 2023 have strengthened this rightist consensus within Israeli society and among Israeli parties, in contrast to the added importance of internal contentious issues as central concerns in the electoral competition.
To read the full paper in English, click here.
To read the full paper in Arabic, click here.
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