The world belongs to old
One sentence from Netanyahu this week should have made every ear perk up: "We have two years left of my great friend Donald Trump's presidency, two years to finish the job." In that sentence, for the first time in 12 races for prime minister, is Netanyahu marking an end date?
Since 2015 the Likud campaign has toyed with such a declaration, tested it in polls and always backed off at the last moment. It's called "iron", the link between the words "prime minister" and "Benjamin Netanyahu." The original argument is that many swing voters will find it easier to support him for final arrangements for one last job (toppling the regime in Iran, peace with Saudi Arabia and Lebanon) if they know it ends afterward. But in most polls the result is that it deters more voters than it attracts. If it turns out, by mistake, that Netanyahu is a mortal of flesh and blood, and not someone with the prime minister's office registered in his name in the land registry, then why not vote for someone else?
This time it may be different. First, because Netanyahu, who turned 77 this week, is no longer a kid. Second, because the next American president will in any case be much tougher than the current one. Some people are ready to swear they heard from the prime minister over the past year that he intends to step down around 2028 or 2029, around the end of the 47th president's term. As is well known, the election for President of the State will be held here in a year and a half, ostensibly a perfect clearing of the desk: closing the open ends in the Middle East, a state role for seven years, and an end to the criminal proceedings. It's all perfect, except that last time he wasn't interested. His answer to a similar proposal in the previous round, in 2021, was cutting: "If it's going to be a prison, I'd rather have the original."
This election offers the oldest gallery to face voters in many years. Netanyahu is in his eighth decade, Liberman and Deri are approaching 70, and Eisenkot and Yair Golan are in their mid-60s. No wonder Bennett, soon to be 55, boasts of his connection with first-time voters. As in the old joke: young at heart seeks young for her age. For Liberman this may be his last Knesset if he realizes his dream of heading the government. Who knows how long Deri will have the strength, and how many tries Eisenkot and Golan will get.
Personally, I think this is Netanyahu's last term. And trust me, because that's exactly what I thought during his past three terms.
How to square the circle
The 2026 election is a rare case in which the hangover arrived before the party even started. Turnout is likely to be the highest in years, perhaps the highest this century. And still, the opposition's most optimistic scenario is a minority government, and most of the coalition's hopes come down to keeping the other side from winning.
Several events that felt dramatic at the time have passed since the campaign began, and who remembers them now? A plane that was hijacked and nearly crashed into Ben Gurion Airport, a huge strike at that same airport, a legislative marathon in the Knesset for the Haredim, fiber-optic drones in Lebanon. All of it passed as if nothing had happened.
What will matter? Without doubt, the single most decisive strategic move of this election is Netanyahu's decision to go for Ofer Winter's head. In the polls placed on his desk every morning, the Amcha Yisrael party is listed under the "left bloc." Netanyahu decided to bring it down out of a deep conviction that it would end up with Liberman and his partners. The right-wing bloc after October 7 is not big enough to absorb a burning of votes on that scale, even by the most flattering polls. Winter, three Haredi parties and Noam can be the whole difference between a tie and a loss, or between a win and a tie, depending on which polls you look at.
The past week was devoted to a hopeless effort to get the stubborn officer to withdraw. Lali Deri, a candidate on his list, was sitting on the porch of her home in Eli this week with a drink to unwind from another day of campaigning, when an unfamiliar silhouette suddenly approached the house. It was Minister Orit Strock, who had come to persuade her to quit the list and somehow set off a domino effect.
On the other side, the problem isn't counting the votes but what comes after. A senior politician summed up Eisenkot's dilemma this week: "If he forms a government with Arab votes he's finished; if he doesn't, they finish him."
Indeed, a Samson's choice Veteran chiefs of staff never die, they only fade away, and anyone sensible in the camp understands that what happened to Gantz with his 35 seats could happen to Eisenkot with the 24 he's polling. Liberman explained this week, with a good deal of logic, that forming a government with Arab votes (from parties "that define Hamas as a charity organization," in his words) would bring Netanyahu back before long with 70 seats. If the polls hold, a double struggle is expected after the election, between Eisenkot and Golan on one side and Liberman and Bennett on the other. The first pair will want to form a minority government. The second will offer the Defendant Law (details below) as a substitute for hope. Eisenkot will want to act under the radar so he doesn't pay an electoral price if he fails. Liberman won't want to be seen as the man who thwarted the chance to replace Netanyahu.
There is no way to reconcile the gap between the polls on the different channels and the internal party polls. It isn't sampling error and it isn't deliberate manipulation. Politicians like to deceive, but not themselves. In the opposition this week they noticed a drift toward them in the polls, which puts them back in the zone where governments can be formed. Turnout there will undoubtedly break records going back years. In the coalition they detected an awakening and a rise in turnout in their own polls. They report a fiery reception wherever Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich show up. One side smells 1977 approaching, a change of government after a traumatic war. The other sees a repeat of 1981, a win against all odds and all polls. The public is bracing for 2019 A and B, a nightmarish cycle of tie and paralysis.
The Michigan madman
And perhaps the election that matters more for Israel's future will take place next week in Michigan? Two years ago, that swing state in the Rust Belt handed Trump the victory and the presidency, thanks to Muslims who were angry at Biden for supporting Israel too much and Jews who were angry at him for supporting it too little.
Now most of the anger is at Trump, and that is the prelude to the decisive test of the radical wing of the Democratic Party. In the summer primary the party chose, even if by a tiny margin, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. Next to him, New York Mayor Mamdani is a member of Otzma Yehudit. El-Sayed, of Egyptian family origin, believes Israel is an "ethnic state" of the kind that has no right to exist. He gave an interview to someone who said he came to the United States to hijack September 11, posted in the past in support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and implicitly justified the attack on a synagogue in Michigan by explaining that the terrorist's family members had been killed by an Israeli missile.
Mamdani took over New York with a pyramid scheme: he recruited enough enthusiastic supporters to win the primary in a deep-blue city where Republicans don't get elected anyway. That is not the situation in Michigan, a swing state whose 21st-century winner won the entire United States. If a fanatic like him is elected on its behalf, the progressive-radical wing of the Democratic Party will see it as proof that all of America can be taken over. In that case El-Sayed would immediately become a name in the presidential race, if not in 2028 then in 2032. If, on the other hand, the Republicans manage to build an effective dam against the "blue wave" in Michigan of all places, the Democrats will be forced into deep soul-searching over their radicalization, including the sharp anti-Israel sentiment. Figures like Josh Shapiro, Rahm Emanuel and others are just waiting for this moment, to say "we told you so" and offer a dose of reality.
As fate would have it, the state where gas prices rose the most sharply of any in the United States is Michigan. In Israel they are following the results with deep concern and tension, since they may mark the loss of America, at least for the foreseeable future. The polls show a small lead for El-Sayed, within the margin of error. Behind the scenes, supporters of Israel are investing enormous efforts to tip the balance. Michigan gave, and perhaps Michigan will take away.
