Campaign season begins as Knesset winter session opens – analysis

In practice, however, it marked the beginning of the election season. True, the elections don’t have to be held until a year from now, in October 2026. But few believe that this government will last that long.

But that itself is remarkable, something – following October 7 – that few thought would be possible. Few believed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be able to survive that catastrophic day.

Yet he did, thanks to a mix of his own political acumen and the lack of it among the opposition, formally led by Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid.

Netanyahu worked at bringing down the government from inside the Knesset, whittling away at its weak links until they bolted from the coalition and the government fell.

Lapid, and the current opposition, took a different approach.

Instead of trying to chip away at Netanyahu’s coalition from within, instead of sowing discord among its ranks in an effort to bring about its implosion, they focused on the outside, on the street.

They couldn’t bring down the government from inside the Knesset, so they thought – erroneously, as it turns out – that they could do so through protests. Endless protests.

First over the judicial reform, then over the hostages and the war. The animating idea being that this public pressure could not be ignored.

But it was, because Netanyahu is the master at tuning out background noise.

After October 7, Netanyahu knew two things.

He knew that to survive politically he needed to keep his coalition together, and to do so he made concessions to the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties to keep them happy and did not take wartime steps that might drive his far Right partners – Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party – out of the coalition for good.

For all the criticism, his coalition held – at least until recently, when it started to fray.

Second, Netanyahu knew that in wartime, fortunes fluctuate.

“Nobody asked Franklin D. Roosevelt to resign after Pearl Harbor,” he said to those calling for his head immediately after October 7. And in the end, he reminded them, Roosevelt is known as the president who led the United States to victory in World War II.

Netanyahu knew that this war would be a long one – he said as much from the outset – and that there would be ups and downs. He also believed, as he declared two days after October 7, that Israel would “change the face of the Middle East” – in other words, that there would be more ups than downs.

He was right. And, as the tides of the war turned favorably, his numbers in the polls rose correspondingly. They rose to the degree that were elections to be held today, Likud would still be the country’s largest party – by a significant gap.

And, for the first time since October 7, in the recent polling after the ceasefire came into effect, the “change bloc” – made up of the Jewish opposition parties – falls short of the 60 seats needed to form a coalition.

Sound familiar? It should. Those are the kinds of numbers that led Israel to five elections in three and a half years, from 2019 to 2022. And what that says, remarkably, is that when it comes to the political map, despite the traumas of the last two years, it has barely shifted.

The coming campaign will aim to change that. And both Netanyahu’s and Lapid’s opening Knesset speeches on Monday offered a glimpse of their strategies.

Netanyahu’s strategy highlight the achievements of the two years since October 7. Hamas significantly degraded and agreeing to terms to end the war that few had thought possible, including the return of all hostages, Israeli control over 53% of Gaza, including all border crossings and the Philadelphi Corridor, and a plan, at least on paper, for Hamas to disarm and for Gaza to be demilitarized.

Hezbollah, he continued, was destroyed, Bashar al-Assad was toppled, the Houthis took a major blow, and most significantly, the Iranian nuclear threat, which he talked of in terms of having been just on the cusp of being able to send all Israelis – religious and secular, Right and Left – up to heaven in atomic smoke, was removed.

That will be his campaign line: Look how he changed the Middle East. Nobody else could have done it; nobody else could have withstood the pressures, both internally and externally. Israel fought, and Israel won.

Netanyahu ended his speech with a dramatic flair, quoting what the returned hostage Rom Braslavski told his captors when they pressed him to convert: “He looked them in the eyes and said, ‘I am a Jew, I am strong, I will not be broken.’ And like Rom, and all our amazing heroes – all Israeli citizens, in captivity, on the front, manning the home front – that is our answer to all our miserable enemies: We are Jews. We are Israelis. We are strong. We will not be broken and, with God’s help, we will win.”

Then Lapid took the Knesset podium and spoiled the party – also revealing what will be his campaign, and the campaign of the opposition.

In an impassioned delivery shouted more than spoken – as if to prove wrong US President Donald Trump, who referred to him as a “nice” opposition head during his Knesset speech last week – Lapid tore into Netanyahu, revealing his campaign hand.

Chiding Netanyahu for boasting of victories over Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, he asked who was the prime minister when Iran built up its power, when Hezbollah amassed 150,000 missiles, and, most importantly, “Who was the prime minister on October 7? ... Who? The opposition?”

Netanyahu wants the public to look beyond October 7 and focus on what came after. Lapid wants Israelis to remember who was responsible for what came before. At the next elections, the nation will decide which it thinks is more important.