By Mohamed Harees –

Israel has gone to the polls amid war, occupation, and international scrutiny. The election is being treated by many foreign commentators as a possible turning point: if Benjamin Netanyahu loses power, perhaps Israel will become more moderate, restrain its settler movement, ease its assault on Gaza, and return to some version of peace diplomacy. That assumption is foolhardy.

Netanyahu is responsible for grave crimes and must be held accountable. But it is a dangerous myth to believe that his removal alone would end the genocide in Gaza, dismantle the occupation, or restore Palestinian rights. The deeper problem is not merely one man. It is the normalization, across large parts of Israeli society and its media, of the idea that Palestinian life is expendable, Palestinian sovereignty is unnecessary, and overwhelming force against Palestinians is justified. A change of prime minister may change Israel’s tone. It will not, by itself, change Palestine.

The election is not a referendum on Palestinian rights. The campaign is dominated by questions that matter intensely to Israelis: Netanyahu’s corruption trial, judicial reform, military failures surrounding October 7, ultra-Orthodox conscription, the economy, and the future of Israeli democracy. These are serious issues. But Palestinian statehood, the occupation, settlement expansion, and the rights of Palestinians under Israeli control are not the central moral questions of the election.

This absence is revealing. Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza do not vote in Israeli elections, even though Israeli governments control many of the conditions of their lives: movement, housing, land, water, security, and political freedom. Israelis can elect a new government without Palestinians having any meaningful say over the power that governs them. An election can therefore produce a new coalition while leaving the fundamental structure intact: military rule over Palestinians, expanding settlements, and the denial of Palestinian self-determination.

Netanyahu is guilty, but not alone

Netanyahu has led Israel through a war in Gaza marked by mass killing, displacement, destruction, and severe humanitarian deprivation. He has defended that campaign internationally, resisted meaningful limits, and led a coalition containing ministers who have openly promoted expulsion, annexation, and permanent domination. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for him over alleged war crimes, and the International Court of Justice is considering genocide allegations brought by South Africa. None of this should be minimized. Netanyahu bears immense responsibility.

But the myth is that he alone authored the catastrophe. The occupation did not begin with him. Settlement expansion did not begin with him. The blockade of Gaza did not begin with him. The political assumption that Palestinians can be indefinitely denied equality and sovereignty did not begin with him. Netanyahu inherited a system built on domination, intensified it, and made it more extreme—but he did not create it alone.

Removing him may remove a uniquely polarizing and corrupt leader. It does not automatically remove the military doctrine, settlement bureaucracy, nationalist ideology, and public consent that sustain the system.

The opposition is not a liberation movement

Netanyahu’s leading challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, is often portrayed abroad as a moderate alternative. In some ways he is: he is less closely tied to the most extreme settler politicians and may be less chaotic in government. But on the central issue, the difference is narrow. Eisenkot rejects Palestinian statehood under his leadership. Like Netanyahu, he treats Israeli security as requiring continued military dominance and rejects the form of Palestinian sovereignty associated with a two-state solution. He has criticised some settlement projects, but he does not offer Palestinians equality, independence, or an end to occupation. That is why the election is unlikely to produce material change for Palestinians. The choice is not between occupation and freedom. It is between different forms of managing occupation.

Israeli society has normalised the unjustifiable

The most uncomfortable truth is that the war in Gaza has been sustained not only by Netanyahu’s government but by broad sections of Israeli society. Political leaders, media commentators, religious figures, military institutions, and many ordinary voters have not only defended it, but promoted it as well.

This does not mean every Israeli supports every act of the war, or that dissent does not exist. There are anti-occupation movements, human-rights organizations like BtSalem, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Jewish Israelis who reject the war. But they remain politically marginal.Polling shows how deep the normalization runs. A majority of Jewish Israelis support keeping West Bank settlements under Israeli sovereignty. Support for a Palestinian state has fallen sharply, with recent polling finding that only about a third of centrist Jewish Israelis support Palestinian statehood.

The Jewish People Policy Institute found that 55 per cent of Jewish Israelis want all Jewish communities in the West Bank to remain under Israeli sovereignty, while support for strengthening control over Palestinians, expanding settlements, and possible annexation rose from 38 per cent in 2024 to 48 per cent in 2026. Support for a peace agreement and Palestinian statehood fell to 14 percent. These are not fringe views. They are mainstream positions. They show a society increasingly comfortable with permanent control over Palestinian land and people.

Dehumanisation makes genocide thinkable

Genocide does not become politically possible only through orders from above. It becomes possible when a society learns to see its victims as less human, less grievable, and less entitled to rights. In Israeli public discourse, Palestinians are often framed collectively as terrorists, security threats, human shields, or demographic dangers. This language allows Palestinian deaths to be treated as collateral damage, home destruction as military necessity, and starvation or displacement as unfortunate but unavoidable consequences of war.

Netanyahu has used and amplified such language. But it is bigger than him. It appears in political speeches, television coverage, social media, military briefings, and everyday conversations. It allows many Israelis to mourn Israeli victims passionately while treating Palestinian victims as abstractions. That moral asymmetry is the foundation on which the destruction of Gaza has been justified.

Israeli media reinforce the consensus

Israeli media play a central role in maintaining this consensus. Mainstream television and much of the Hebrew-language press have tended to center Israeli suffering, hostages, soldiers, and national unity, while demonising Palestinians, justifying civilian deaths, starvation, displacement, and destroyed communities.

This does not require formal censorship alone. It works through selection and framing: whose grief is shown, whose voices are heard, which experts are invited, and which criticisms are treated as legitimate. A Reuters Institute report found that mainstream Israeli TV largely ignored Palestinian suffering in Gaza, while smaller independent outlets that covered it reached far smaller audiences.

When Palestinian suffering is rarely seen, Israeli viewers can support policies whose human consequences they never fully confront. When criticism of the war is framed as disloyalty or propaganda, moral questioning becomes socially dangerous. This is how media normalize violence: not always by telling people what to think, but by repeatedly deciding what they do not need to see.

Why “Netanyahu is the problem” is comforting

The Netanyahu-only explanation is comforting because it simplifies a difficult reality. For foreign governments, it lets them condemn a leader while avoiding confrontation with the broader Israeli consensus. They can continue arms transfers, diplomatic protection, and trade relations while waiting for Israel to “choose moderation” at the ballot box. For many Israelis, it allows opposition to Netanyahu to be mistaken for opposition to occupation. One can despise his corruption and authoritarianism while still supporting settlements, military domination, and the denial of Palestinian statehood.

For international media, it creates a simple story: bad leader, good society, temporary crisis. But Gaza is not a temporary crisis caused by one man’s personality. It is the outcome of a political culture that has normalized Palestinian dispossession.

Accountability must go beyond one man

If genocide is real—and it is—then accountability cannot stop with Netanyahu. It must include the officials who planned policy, the commanders who ordered operations, the politicians who incited expulsion, and the institutions that enabled them. But accountability must also be political and social. It must challenge the consensus that made the policy possible. That means refusing to treat anti-Palestinian racism as a private Israeli matter. It means challenging media narratives that humanize Israeli grief while reducing Palestinians to numbers. It means supporting Palestinian voices, Israeli dissenters, and human-rights organizations rather than treating them as extremists.

It also means international consequences. Governments cannot claim to oppose genocide while continuing unconditional arms transfers, diplomatic shielding, and economic normalization with the state carrying it out. Human Rights Watch has argued that foreign governments should not suspend their legal and moral obligations while waiting for an Israeli election to change things.

What real change would require

A Netanyahu defeat might make Israel less corrupt, less chaotic, or less openly extremist. Those changes would matter to Israelis. But they would not end the genocide, reverse the occupation, halt settlement expansion, or restore Palestinian rights. Real change would require Israeli society to reject the idea that Palestinian life is expendable. It would require recognizing Palestinians as a people entitled to freedom, equality, sovereignty, and safety—not merely as a security problem to be managed. It would require dismantling military rule, ending settlement expansion, accepting accountability for crimes, and allowing Palestinians genuine self-determination. Above all, it would require Israelis to stop asking, “How can we make this occupation safer or more efficient?” and begin asking, “How can we end it?”

Israel’s election may change who governs Israel. It will not, on its own, change what Israel does to Palestinians. Netanyahu must be held accountable. But the myth that he alone is responsible allows too many people to avoid the harder truth: genocide in Gaza has been made possible by a broad social and political normalization of Palestinian dehumanisation. Whether Netanyahu wins or loses, nothing will change unless Israeli society changes its moral imagination and the world accepts that accountability goes beyond Netanyahu. Until then, Palestinians will continue to pay the price of Israeli oppression and global silence.