Israel Stock Ideas

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Oct 2026 Israeli election situation -

(summary below)

Hopefully (imo) Netanyahu will be out after the coming October election, but I wouldn't bet on it. The political landscape in Israel makes the current US situation seem orderly in comparison. I thought Benny Gantz seemed like a 'voice of reason', relatively speaking, but the key to peace will be pushing the extreme lunatics (Ben-Gvir and Smotrich) back to the political wilderness where they belong. Netanyahu has had to include them in his ruling coalition to stay in power, which has unfortunately produced the most far-right coalition in Israel’s history. Bibi has to keep the extreme fringe happy or they can bolt and bring down his government. Bibi is under multiple indictments that could send him to prison if he doesn't stay in power. So he has had a strong incentive to keep the wars going in order to stay out of the slammer. Hell of a way to run a railroad, but that's the situation, and the US / world are dragged into the mess due to over-dependence on Middle East oil

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>>> 2026 Israeli Elections


Feb. 13, 2026

Britannica AI


https://www.britannica.com/event/2026-Israeli-Elections


Israelis go to the polls in 2026 for one of Israel’s most contentious elections in recent history. Set to be held in October, the elections for the Knesset (Israeli parliament) are the first to take place since the October 7 attack and the resulting Israel-Hamas War. The elections come at a pivotal moment for Israel, which is facing intense polarization at home and extraordinary scrutiny abroad, and the outcome could have a profound impact on the trajectory of Israel’s political system, its policies toward the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and its relations with the international community.

Although Benjamin Netanyahu is the closest prime minister since Golda Meir (1969–74) to completing a full Knesset term in office, his term has been exceptionally divisive. After a historic defeat in the 2021 elections amid a corruption scandal, he returned to power at the end of 2022 with the most far-right coalition in Israel’s history. Upon taking office, his coalition moved quickly to bring the judiciary under legislative oversight—an attempt to alter Israel’s checks and balances that ultimately failed but prompted an unprecedented wave of protests in early 2023. After the October 7 attack in 2023, many Israelis placed blame on Netanyahu’s government for ignoring warning signs that Hamas was preparing for the attack. He also faced accusations of prolonging the war—and holding up the release of hostages taken on October 7—for political gain as well as causing immense damage to Israel’s image abroad. Nonetheless, under Netanyahu, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) transformed the landscape of the entire Middle East by decapitating Hezbollah and Hamas and successfully attacking Iran—including disabling its air defenses, taking out its top military commanders, and, with the assistance of the United States, setting back its nuclear program.

How do elections work in Israel?

Israel is a parliamentary democracy. Israelis vote for a political party to represent their interests in the legislature (Knesset), and parties are assigned seats proportional to the vote. After each election, the president (who is elected by the Knesset to a seven-year term) selects a prime minister from among the party leaders after considering the election results and consulting party leaders. The prime minister is then confirmed by a simple majority in the legislature. Israel’s many political parties do not typically win majorities in elections and must form coalitions with other parties, often by promising them an influential role in the prime minister’s cabinet.

All resident Israeli citizens, including Israel’s sizable minority of Palestinian Muslims, may vote in elections. Israeli settlers, most of whom live in territories that have not been formally annexed by Israel, may also vote. Most of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem, who have permanent residency but usually reject Israeli citizenship (in protest against Israeli rule over East Jerusalem), cannot vote.

Who are the major players?

Since Netanyahu was elected in 2009, the right-wing Likud party, rooted in Vladimir Jabotinsky’s revisionist branch of Zionism, has dominated Israeli politics. The Labour Party, a legacy of David Ben-Gurion’s labor branch of Zionism, has struggled to perform in elections since the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during the second intifada (2000–05). In 2024 it merged with another left-wing party, Meretz, to form the Democrats party after polling showed Labour may not make the threshold to enter the next Knesset on its own. Centrist parties that prioritize pressing security or social issues over ideological matters, such as Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, have led the opposition to Likud when Labour was unable to do so. A few small parties, which largely represent Palestinian citizens of Israel and categorically reject Zionism, make up a small but influential Arab bloc. In 2021 the Arab bloc was pivotal in helping Naftali Bennett, a right-wing settler, unseat Netanyahu.

Many analysts consider the election to be a referendum on Netanyahu’s handling of October 7 and the Israel-Hamas War. Polling in the year before the election indicated that Netanyahu’s coalition, which had been razor-thin in the 2022 elections, would lose its majority and that the opposition would perform slightly better but still struggle to reach a majority.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Netanyahu’s party, Likud, appears set to receive the most votes in the election, making him the leading contender in his coalition to be prime minister. He is nearly guaranteed to be the favored candidate for prime minister by the religious right parties Shas and United Torah Judaism and by far-right parties such as Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism if those parties reach the necessary threshold to win Knesset seats.

Naftali Bennett

The challenger Naftali Bennett, who briefly replaced Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister in 2021–22, is leading the opposition to unseat him again in 2026.

Bennett, a former protégé of Netanyahu, leads the opposition. He is often considered to be on the right of Netanyahu, with a base of support from religious Israeli settlers, and his political rise coincided with his push in the 2010s for Israel to annex parts of the West Bank. But, when he ousted Netanyahu in 2021 and became prime minister, he led a historic coalition that included his own right-wing party, the center and left-wing parties, and a party from the Arab bloc. His coalition lost its majority only a year later—not from defections among his ideological rivals in the coalition but from defections within his own party. He subsequently took a break from politics, but after the October 7 attack he began proposing strategies in the press for confronting Hamas and Iran. Coming second in opinion polling, Bennett may look to repeat his previous feat of leading a broad coalition across the political spectrum, although in a town hall in February 2026 he suggested that he would not consider a party from the Arab bloc in his coalition this time around.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich

Last election's kingmaker

Last election's kingmakerIn 2022 Itamar Ben-Gvir led a small party to the Knesset but commanded enough seats to make demands from Benjamin Netanyahu while he was forming his coalition.

Bezalel Smotrich

Bezalel SmotrichHaving benefited from Naftali Bennett's refusal to participate in the last set of elections, Bezalel Smotrich is expected to lose some voters to Bennett and may not get enough votes to return to the Knesset.

After years on the fringes of Israeli politics, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich became essential to Netanyahu’s formation of a razor-thin coalition in 2022. Without the support of their far-right parties, Jewish Power and Religious Zionism, Netanyahu would not have had enough votes in the Knesset to become prime minister. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have since been responsible for some of the most controversial policies of Netanyahu’s most recent term, including the attempt to reform the judiciary, the relaxation of regulations over gun ownership, and the easing of restrictions on Israeli settlement activity and settler vigilantism. Smotrich, whose support in the 2022 elections came largely from Bennett’s voter base, is not expected to get enough votes to return to the Knesset without running jointly with Ben-Gvir.

Gadi Eisenkot

Relative to other candidates, Gadi Eisenkot (Eizenkot) is a newcomer. He first joined the Knesset after the 2022 election as a member of Benny Gantz's party. But, after playing an important role in the Israel-Hamas War, he has gained a following of his own.

Benny Gantz

Once the top contender to replace Benjamin Netanyahu, Benny Gantz has fallen out of favor and may not gain enough votes to enter the Knesset.

Gadi Eisenkot (Eizenkot) and Benny Gantz are former IDF chiefs of staff who participated in Netanyahu’s war cabinet in the first year of the Israel-Hamas War. They were highly critical of Netanyahu’s handling of the war, particularly for his lack of an exit strategy, and quit in June 2024. At the start of the war, their participation in the cabinet lent considerable legitimacy to Netanyahu’s government; Gantz was characterized by Netanyahu’s critics as the “grown-up in the room.” In September 2025 Eisenkot created a new party to contest elections, Yashar! (Straight Ahead!) with Eisenkot, which polling showed to be competitive for third place. Although Gantz was favored for prime minister at the start of the Israel-Hamas War, support for him declined rapidly after his resignation from the cabinet. Opinion polling indicates that his Blue and White party may not receive enough votes to enter the Knesset. In January 2026 Gantz indicated that he would be willing to join a government led by Netanyahu to prevent a government that includes Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, or parties from the Arab bloc.r

Key People: Benjamin Netanyahu Benny Gantz Naftali Bennett Itamar Ben-Gvir Bezalel Smotrich

The Arab bloc

Like in 2021, the Arab bloc could again play the role of kingmaker. The parties in the bloc comprise a variety of political orientations, ranging from Hadash, a mixed Arab-Jewish party with communist origins, to Ra?am, a conservative Islamist party that took part in Bennett’s 2021–22 governing coalition, and Ta?al, a secularist party that advocates development in Arab communities. Unlike Israel’s other political parties, the Arab bloc parties consider the idea of Israel as a Jewish state discriminatory and reject Zionism as a guiding ideology for policy, leading other parties in Israel to hesitate in working with them. They nonetheless find common ground with some of the other parties on matters such as investment in Arab communities and reducing crime. Following an Arab-led protest in Sakhnin against crime in January 2026, the Arab parties announced that they intend to contest the elections on a single list. They previously ran on a single list in 2015 and emerged as the Knesset’s third largest party, with 15 seats, but the competing interests within the list may make it more difficult for members of the Arab bloc to join a coalition.
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