Israel’s long October

The same pattern can be seen on Israel's northern border with Lebanon. Hezbollah joined Iran's war on 2 March 2026, and Israel reinvaded southern Lebanon. A 16 April ceasefire opened the first direct talks between Israel and Lebanon in decades. The Lebanese government took the once-unthinkable step of outlawing Hezbollah's military wing. Israel withdrew from three designated "pilot zones," allowing the Lebanese army to move in, but says it will go no further until Hezbollah disarms.

In neighbouring Syria, President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in late September that the two sides had reached "90% of agreements" on a security pact before Israel walked away. On both fronts, a diplomatic opening has yet to produce a lasting settlement.

Then there is Iran: the confrontation Netanyahu had sought for 20 years came but brought no conclusive results. On 28 February 2026, Israel and the United States launched joint strikes that killed Iran's Supreme Leader. Since the breakdown of a Pakistan-brokered memorandum, the conflict has shifted to tankers and shipping routes around the Strait of Hormuz. The decision on how and when to end the conflict now sits largely out of Israel's control.

Taken together, these fronts suggest a doctrine no one has formally announced. The contrast is stark: Ben-Gurion's Israel sought short wars followed by diplomacy; Netanyahu's Israel increasingly holds territory in place of a diplomatic settlement. Each position offers a tactical advantage. Each also ties down reservists, exposes them to a grinding conflict, and postpones the political decision military force cannot make.

A reckoning deferred

Israel's military lines postpone the question of how its wars will end. Its government has worked even harder to postpone the question of who should answer for how they began.

The clearest message from recent polling concerns trust. Israelis are broadly satisfied with the army's performance, yet deeply dissatisfied with the government's leadership. They distinguish between those who fought the war and those who led the country through it. Three in four want a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the October 7 attack, including a majority of voters who support the governing coalition. In an Israel Democracy Institute survey conducted in early September, 68% of Jewish respondents said the October 7 attacks would be central to their vote.

Read more: Israelis' eroding trust in government is on the ballot

After the surprise attack of 1973, that demand proved impossible to resist. This time, Netanyahu has resisted it. He has blocked a state commission, proposed a politically shaped alternative that would extend the investigation back to the Oslo peace process and Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, and then allowed even that proposal to stall. The Supreme Court, reluctant to intervene on the eve of an election, has left the issue to the next government.

Meanwhile, each revelation revives questions about Netanyahu's leadership before and on that fateful day. Reports of foreign warnings have sharpened the dispute over Netanyahu's responsibility. Both Haaretz and The New York Times reported that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed warned him in September 2023 of a major Hamas operation, but that he failed to alert his security chiefs. For their part, The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal separately reported Egyptian warnings before October 7.

While Netanyahu denies the allegations and the UAE has declined to confirm the report, it would be naive to think the timing (just before a critical election) is incidental. The warning described by The Atlantic reportedly lacked operational details—a crucial distinction between predicting escalation and identifying an attack's timing, scale and targets. Still, it is clear that in the lead-up to October 7, trust between the military and the political leadership had eroded to the point that Netanyahu refused to meet security officials at several points before the war. Efforts to avoid setting up an independent commission also point to a lack of transparency and an effort to avoid being held accountable for one of the worst days in Israel's history.

The contrast with 1973 is stark. Then, the public refused to let military commanders shoulder the blame alone. Now, senior commanders have accepted responsibility, and many have resigned, while political leaders remain in office. This deferment strategy has somewhat succeeded: Israelis will go to the polls later this month without learning about the commission's findings. 

Decisions made elsewhere

For Israel, there is a little-discussed cost to its current deferment strategy: agency. Trying to resolve strategic issues through tactical measures has led Israel to lose the initiative and to have less control over the outcome.

Israel fought Iran alongside the US, but it is Washington that now leads the Gaza ceasefire process, the Lebanon talks and efforts to end the Hormuz standoff. Israelis see the shift: half say the American administration has more influence over their security decisions than their own government. But when Israel offers no plan for Gaza's future, it cannot complain if others take the initiative. When it leaves the terms for ending the Iran war unresolved, this gives Washington and Tehran the space to negotiate those terms themselves.

That dependence rests on an increasingly narrow political base. While much of the focus is on aid and weapons, dependence has also grown diplomatically. Israel has never relied so heavily on one US president while enjoying so little support among Americans more broadly.

Read more: US public opinion is decisively shifting against Israel

For the first time in a generation, there are clear signs that Israel is losing parts of the American public. Among Democrats and younger Americans, the balance has shifted further against Israel. Its alliance with the United States increasingly depends on one party. That is a fragile basis for a security strategy built around American power.

Europe, meanwhile, has begun moving from criticism toward penalties, restrained mainly by Germany and Italy. Israel is not a pariah, but its partners are reconsidering the terms of the relationship. Support once taken for granted is becoming more conditional.

The largest diplomatic prize—normalisation with Saudi Arabia—also depends on a choice Israel continues to defer. Riyadh still requires a credible path to Palestinian statehood. Israelis remain deeply divided over the Palestinians' future, with no option commanding anything close to majority support. That division leaves Israel without a clear offer to put on the table. The longer it postpones one, the more others will shape the terms.

A critical vote

All of this converges on the upcoming election. Israel approaches its 27 October vote with October 7 still acting as the country's political axis. Polls show a country divided almost evenly.

More revealing than the race's closeness is what it is being fought over: accountability more than strategy. The leading challengers, Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman, are security hawks. They challenge Netanyahu over the October 7 failure and exemptions from military service, rather than Israel's current security posture and broader strategy. Israelis disagree bitterly over whom to trust more than over what to do: The country has a security consensus and a visible leadership crisis. The lack of strategic vision goes unaddressed.

That distinguishes this election from the upheaval of 1977, when Menachem Begin ended decades of Labour rule and subsequently made peace with Egypt. A change of government in 2026 may not bring a comparable change of direction. The opposition offers different leadership—and, to be sure, a different leadership may offer opportunities to fine-tune strategy. Still, the opposition has yet to lay out clearly how its strategy truly differs from the one Netanyahu leaves behind.

The election's likeliest immediate result is not a new government, but prolonged bargaining over one. Neither camp appears able to secure a parliamentary majority on its own. The ultra-Orthodox parties will seek protection for military-service exemptions; the Arab parties may hold crucial votes while remaining partners that other parties hesitate to embrace publicly. An inquiry into October 7, military conscription and Netanyahu's pardon request could all become bargaining chips.

Beyond those negotiations, much of the direction is already visible. Israel's military lines are likely to survive the election: no plausible government is likely to withdraw while Hamas and Hezbollah remain armed. The risk is that temporary security zones become permanent boundaries without an explicit decision to make them so. An end to the Iran war is more likely to come through negotiation than surrender, with America shaping the terms more than Israel.

Three years after October 7, Israel has recovered the capacity to inspire fear in its enemies, but not enough to give its citizens confidence in what comes next. The election may change who leads the country; yet ending its long October will require a government willing to answer for the past and choose a direction beyond it.