Lawfare Daily: Israel's Most Consequential Election, with Natan Sachs

The Lawfare Podcast

This episode of the Lawfare Podcast explores the upcoming October 27th Israeli elections, analyzing their significance as a referendum on Prime Minister Netanyahu and the broader

Key takeaways

• The Israeli elections are less about traditional left-right divisions and more about a fundamental split between pro-Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs.
• Netanyahu's tenure has been marked by institutional destabilization, particularly through judicial reforms, which have deepened political polarization.

Main topics

• Israeli elections on October 27th
• Netanyahu's political legacy and institutional reforms

Notable quotes

It's not just right and left. It's certainly not economic right and left. It's Netanyahu, but Netanyahu encapsulates a lot.

Conclusion

While Netanyahu's potential defeat would mark a significant political shift, it is unlikely to result in a dramatic

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) you If you're with Bennett and not Eisenkot, you may see a much more hardline approach on some of the aspects in Gaza, for example, and less of a willingness, especially in the West Bank, to entertain pressure from abroad. It's the Lawfare Podcast. Speaker 2 (0:18) I'm Dan Byman, the foreign policy editor of Lawfare, and I'm here with Natan Sox, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. Speaker 1 (0:26) So if you think of three blocks, in a sense, the Netanyahu block, the Eisenkot block, And then the Arab party bloc, the bigger the Arab party bloc is, the smaller the other two would be by simple math. And so in a sense, if they were tiny, both other blocs grow. And since Eisenhower's bloc is slightly bigger than, or is actually bigger than Netanyahu's bloc in the polls, you'd expect him to then cross the 61 threshold. Speaker 2 (0:51) Today we're talking about Israel's coming elections. Israel's election is scheduled for October 27th, and it is the first national election in Israel since the October 7th, 2023 terrorist attacks. This election is, at least if current polls are accurate, quite close with a lot of competing parties. Let's start with just a very basic question. What is this election about? Is it a referendum on Prime Minister Netanyahu? Is it about October 7th and its legacy? What are voters thinking about as they go to the polls? Speaker 1 (1:34) Yeah, so as you said, we've done a few podcasts on lawfare over the years, including on Israeli elections. And so I'm trying to think what has changed since the last few elections that we've covered on lawfare even, and you've done a lot of great work also besides my participations. In some ways, same old. So this is still a referendum around Netanyahu. And I say that because when we talk about the blocks, these are not right and left, as Israelis usually define right and left. Right and left in Israel are defined mostly around the conflict with the Arab states, with the Palestinians, especially with the Palestinians. And that is simply not the dividing line today in the blocks that everyone is counting and waiting eagerly to see who wins on October 27th. These blocks are fundamentally pro-Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu. It's not just personally about him. It's about the whole package that he represents. And I'll talk about that in a second. But in some ways, he's defining the fissure here. So it's not right and left. It's certainly not economic right and left, where there are differences across both blocks that really almost don't track the blocks. So it's Netanyahu, but Netanyahu encapsulates a lot. Netanyahu has been Israel's longest prime minister by far now. He passed David and Gregorian several years ago. And he has been a dominant force in Israeli politics, certainly since coming back to power in 2009, but really all the way back to 1996 when he was first elected. But he's changed over the years. And so the last, I'd say, seven years, since 2019, Netanyahu has included in it a dramatic destabilization of what were Israeli norms and institutions. His supporters would, of course, say that was justified and it was a needed shakeup. His detractors would say that, especially since 2022, but already before that, this has been a reckless assault on the balance of power between institutions in Israel, even before October 7th. what he was calling judicial reform, a dramatic overhaul of checks and balances in Israel that can sound better in English than they actually are because they are working within a system that is very different from the American one. And since October 7th, it's about October 7th and his response to that. So you asked, is it about all of these things? It's all of the above, but encapsulated in Netanyahu. One last point on this. Since October 7th, there is both unanimity in Israel and consensus around the need to fight, the need to respond to Hamas, the need to incur into Gaza, but also fundamental differences on how that was conducted, and especially the length of the breadth of this war, the relentless three years of essentially nonstop war. I was just hearing someone comment in a completely different context. And they were saying, you know, it was just before, just as the war started, I was called into reserve duty. And then they said, I don't actually remember what round it was. And this is it. People talk about Iran 1, Iran 2, what round in Gaza with reservists doing hundreds of days, not to mention, of course, the devastation around Israel and especially in Gaza. So this is all of the above, but very much a referendum on that. And that makes these elections. As the cliche would go, and this time it is true, the most consequential elections probably in Israel's history, certainly in many decades. And that is felt not, it's not just a theoretical point. It's very much felt by Israeli voters who are very much attuned to this election. Speaker 2 (5:07) Let's pick up on that and talk about the consequences. I realize it's hard to predict, but let's say Gadi Eizam called Tix Powell or Naftali Bennett some of the main rivals. What would change on Gaza? What would change on Iran? What would change in other important issues? So it's clearly consequential, but what might we expect to be different if there is a leadership change? Speaker 1 (5:32) So this is a very important question, and I think the answer is a decidedly mixed one, which is that it's a lot less than some people hope and a lot more than some people claim. It's a lot less than people who hope that Simply Netanyahu leaving will be a wholesale change in everything Israel has done in the last few years, with many people, of course, not liking it. Israel is deeply traumatized from October 7th, and not just in a way, not just in the sense of anger or a sense of vengeance, but a very different understanding of what fundamental security for Israeli civilians would necessitate. And that is not about to change. That's not about Netanyahu. It's much, much broader than him. An impatience with containing threats is prevalent in Israel today and is very widely discussed. The idea of containment itself has become a dirty word as almost the sort of fundamental axiomatic lesson of October 7th. And this permeates way, way beyond Netanyahu and his coalition. So that's not going to change. And we don't see in the opposition. much appetite at all for ideas of a Palestinian state or two-state solution, very far from that, in most of the opposition, excluding the Democrats on the left and perhaps privately quite a few people on the center. But there are very central forces in the opposition. You mentioned Naftali Bennett, Vigdor Lieberman, some of the figures in Gadi Aizenkot's party, still to emerge, the party is not yet clear, would be very much against it in real time. So we're very far from that. However, A change from Netanyahu to Eisenhower would be, I think, a profound change, nonetheless. It would be a profound change first in this attitude of endless open war, a seven-front war, as Netanyahu has deemed it, and many Israelis understand it to be, a seven-front war with really one core, which is Tehran. So if we look at all the fronts where Israel has been fighting, be it, of course, in Gaza and in Lebanon, but also militia in Syria previously, now still in Iraq, the Houthis. Iranian activity in the West Bank, and of course, Iran itself, they're all actually part of the Iranian ring of fire. It's not been a random firing in all directions. We have not seen fighting on Israel's probably two most important borders, the most consequential one, the border with Egypt, and the longest one, the one with Jordan. There has been no fighting with Egypt and Jordan on the Israeli side because Iran is not present there. So this very, very broad war against and Iran kind of backed. as the Israelis understand it, but an endless one and a deep change in the Israeli doctrine of security, a security doctrine which has always favored short wars and has changed dramatically under Netanyahu. This, I think, would be very different under Eisenkot. Eisenkot is someone who was, of course, chief of staff of the military and was not hesitant at all to use force, an overwhelming force in some cases, devastating force, but was also usually very cautious about its use. He's known, and I think with very good reason, as very level-headed. He's a cool kind of creature, very smart. His party is known as straight, but it's really honest is what it means. Honest with an exclamation mark, yashal. And that's kind of the image he's portraying, but one that resonates with his character, which is calm, stubborn, honest, sort of professional military. and also recognizing the limits of the use of force. So I'd expect a very different approach in that, in the use of force, the number of fronts Israel wants to open, and therefore the willingness to move towards diplomatic, not resolution of conflicts, but diplomatic arrangements that would allow de-escalation, allow rebuilding, and that would include Gaza. I think Israel would be probably much more willing to work with the Trump. Board of Peace, Mladenov effort in an earnest way, not in an alternative vision that many people perhaps hope for abroad. In that context, they would be much more forthcoming, and perhaps in others, perhaps in Syria and Lebanon, and in winding down the war in Iran, but not because they have a fundamentally different view of the threat from Iran, or would be less willing to use force if they thought it was absolutely necessary, but a much less liberal use of force, I would expect. That's very much sort of stemming from Eisenkot. There are actually big differences between Eisenkot and Bennett and Lieberman in this regard, especially Bennett, I think, who is a much more, he's very pragmatic in some senses. He's very, very right wing in the Palestinian issue. So his goals are very hard line. But in terms of what he would do and how he would deal with the world, he likes to portray himself as pragmatic and he is actually. But he is also someone who is known to be more of a risk taker. Whereas Eisenkot is a very steady kind of hand. Bennett is entrepreneurial, high tech kind of person and a risk taker in many respects. Speaker 2 (10:30) Is there an example you can think of where that difference between Eisenkot and Bennett might show up? I mean, I realize a lot of that is about future contingencies that are hard to predict. But is there something you're thinking of in particular where, you know, boy, this really might go in a different direction, depending on if which one of these wins, if either does. Speaker 1 (10:48) Yes, absolutely. So right now, it does not look likely that Bennett will be prime minister. It looks likely that it's either Eisenkot or Netanyahu, but never say never. We're getting close, but still never say never. Could be even Lieberman if he manages to play these political cards right and he's Speaker 2 (11:05) a Speaker 1 (11:05) master politician. So who knows? If it were Bennett and not Eisenkot, you may see a much more hardline approach on some of the aspects in Gaza, for example. and less of a willingness, especially in the West Bank, to entertain pressure from abroad. Pressure from abroad, given that there's a Trump administration, might be quite limited. And on some important issues, such as terrorism against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, which has been rampant in recent years, that is one on which Bennett and Eisenkot, I think, would be of one mind, which is that that has to end quickly. And they'd be very eager to prove that, perhaps for different reasons. Bennett, who is very much pro-settlement, would like to show that that is not the essence of settlements. Whereas Eisenkot believes in law and order and the military as the sovereign there would be able to, should be ordered to end this. But you could see quite important differences and you might see Bennett more open to, you might call it adventurism