Israel's election revealed a divided country

To report on last week's general election in Israel was to report on two different countries.

There is the Israel seen from abroad - a country increasingly isolated over its war in Gaza and its conduct in the Occupied West Bank, the one facing accusations of genocide, sanctions and boycotts.

And then there is the Israel I found on the ground - where that global isolation, and the war that caused it, barely featured in the election campaign.

In some ways, it’s actually not surprising. Three years later, the attacks on 7 October 2023, the deadliest day in the country’s history, remain the lens through which almost everything there is seen.

In a nation very much built in the shadow of the Holocaust, those attacks revived the oldest of Jewish fears - that they could never be fully safe, not even in a state of their own.

Many in Ireland, where sympathy for the Palestinians runs deep, would argue that those attacks did not happen in a vacuum - but came after decades of brutal occupation, and that Israel’s response has amounted to the collective punishment of more than two million people.

But, no matter how sceptical you are, the reality on the ground was unmistakable.

Who bears responsibility for what happened on 7 October was, by some magnitude, the defining question of this election. And what followed in Gaza, and what it has cost Israel in terms of its reputation, hardly registered.

When Israel’s standing in the world did come up on the campaign trail, it was mostly seen as a PR problem.

Yes, the country’s reputation was in tatters, and something needed to be done about that - but few suggested that the actual policies behind it needed to change.

That is why this election was described as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For decades, he has cast himself as 'Mr Security’, as the only man who knows how to keep Israel safe.

But 7 October happened on his watch - and one report even claimed he had been personally warned in advance.

His supporters seem to fall into two camps.

Some accept that he bears a share of the blame, but believe the wars he has fought since - and how he has stood up for Israel on the international stage - have more than made up for it.

Others believe the failure rests squarely on the shoulders of the generals and the security chiefs.

His opponents, for their part, see him as thoroughly unfit for office, and say the country cannot heal until he is ousted.

And so the results of the election reflected that divide almost perfectly.

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Read more:
Netanyahu bloc finishes ahead in Israel vote, but well short of majority

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In Sderot, the largest town on the border with Gaza and one of those hardest hit on 7 October, his bloc won around 70% of the vote.

That is a margin that most politicians can only dream of.

In liberal Tel Aviv, the verdict went overwhelmingly the other way.

The headline numbers allow both sides to claim a kind of victory.

On the one hand, Mr Netanyahu’s coalition of right-wing, far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties fell well short of the 61 seats needed for a majority.

On the other, his Likud party will still be the largest in the next Knesset.

In a country where no party has ever won a majority on its own, it is hard to say that he simply lost the election.

Nor did his main rival Gadi Eisenkot exactly storm the election.

Yashar, the new centrist party founded by the former army chief, who ran essentially as the "not Netanyahu" candidate, finished well behind Likud.

If you were hoping for a neat conclusion, this election simply refused to offer one.

Israel is a country divided, more or less exactly down the middle, and it voted that way on Tuesday.

Except in one respect.

The clearest story of this election came from the 20% of Israel’s population who are Arab citizens.

For years, many had stayed at home, out of apathy, alienation, or a sense that their votes would change nothing.

For some, participating in an election felt like lending legitimacy to the state.

But this time they turned out in huge numbers.

Many were voting against Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two of the most extreme figures in Mr Netanyahu’s government, who have pursued a hardline agenda in the Occupied West Bank.

As the results came in on Tuesday night, supporters of the Arab parties celebrated with a chant: "Go home, Ben-Gvir."

The result was 19 seats, more than Arab-led parties have ever won.

And, in theory, it makes them the difference between whether Mr Netanyahu gets to remain in the prime minister’s office.

In practice, most of the opposition promised voters that they would not go into government with the Arab parties.

And yet, something does appear to be shifting.

Just under a year ago, the Israel Democracy Institute found that 71.5% of Jewish Israelis opposed Arab parties joining a government. On the right, support was just 7%.

But, on election night, a survey of opposition voters by the Hebrew University found that 61% favoured a government led by Mr Eisenkot with one of the Arab parties.

It was the most popular option in the poll, well ahead of a new election, at 20%, or a deal with Mr Netanyahu, at 12%.

They are, of course, different surveys of different groups, so it would be wrong to read too much into them.

But, in a country where politics tends to move slowly, it may be the first sign of a crack.

When Israel’s founders signed the Declaration of Independence in 1948, they promised "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex".

Nearly 80 years later, those 19 newly elected members of parliament are, in effect, asking whether that promise holds.

The coming weeks of coalition talks will begin to give an answer.