The prime minister has traditionally relied on a stable base of right-wing voters, but is projected to see a thinning of support in this election. Some voters may be slipping away to opposition parties like Eisenkot’s. Others, including some die-hard Likud voters we spoke to, said the 7 October attacks had pushed them towards parties further on the right.
Lt Col (Res) Eyal Hajbi, head of the regional civil defence unit in the Netanyahu stronghold of Sderot, right on the Gaza border, lost several friends and colleagues in the attacks. He lights candles for them every day in his office, and told me he would be thinking about them when he cast his ballot on Tuesday.
Standing on a ridge overlooking the ruins of northern Gaza, he gestured to the wasteland where Israel’s army has completely flattened the neighbourhoods of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.
“As far as I’m concerned, after 7 October, we should wipe them all out,” he said. “I’ve changed my understanding of Gaza. Before, I wouldn’t have said we should destroy it.”
He told me he and his family had always voted Likud, but that now he was voting for the far-right party of Itamar Ben Gvir, Jewish Power.
“My family has become more extreme than it ever was before,” he said. “If once we deliberated over it, today we don’t think twice; we vote.”
Polls suggest that less than 10% of Israelis are undecided and that very few of those are considering switching between government parties and opposition ones.
Ben Gvir, National Security minister in Netanyahu’s coalition, has been reaching out to younger voters through headline-grabbing social media campaigns.
A poll for one of Israel’s leading newspapers, Yedioth Ahronoth, published on 9 October, suggested that more than 16% of first-time voters in Israel would choose far-right parties like his.
In Sderot, a group of 18 year olds from a nearby Jewish religious college told me their political views had been affected by the 7 October attacks far more than their parents. All four teenagers were planning to vote for another far-right party, Religious Zionism, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
“Today, the whole younger generation understands that peaceful paths will not work,” Aviad Elmahach, one of the teenagers, told me. “Older adults, who are set in a fixed mindset, find [it] harder to change, but the youth understand that we need to be here with strength and an iron fist, which is the only way to win.”
The lesson of 7 October, he said, was that Israel needed to be as forceful as possible in its relations with the Palestinians, more than 74,000 of whom have been killed by Israel in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.
“The youth have a fresh new perspective that has not yet become entrenched in politics, and they understand very well why we’re voting for Smotrich – it means holding the land with strength and giving [the Palestinians] nothing through peaceful gestures.”
