Israel heads to its first post-Oct. 7 election after the Knesset completed a full term, with polling showing Gadi Eizenkot's Yashar narrowly ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud but no bloc near a majority.
Israel's Knesset is set to dissolve on Friday ahead of national elections on October 27, 2026, the country's first election since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, and the first time parliament has completed a full term since 1988. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader, enters the campaign facing scrutiny over the handling of the wars in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon, strained relations with Western allies, domestic institutional disputes and debate over illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Under Israel's nationwide proportional representation system, parties compete on national lists for seats in the 120-member Knesset and must clear a 3.25% threshold, making coalition-building essential because no party has ever won an outright majority. Channel 12 polling cited in the report projects former Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot's new Yashar party on 23 seats, ahead of Netanyahu's Likud on 22, with former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid's joint Together ticket on 16. Even so, neither camp is projected to reach the 61 seats needed to govern. Parties opposed to Netanyahu are projected at 59 seats, the pro-Netanyahu and ultra-Orthodox bloc at 51, and Arab parties at 10. A central campaign issue is whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should be conscripted into the military, with Eizenkot, Lapid and Bennett ruling out continuing Netanyahu's approach of relying on ultra-Orthodox parties while deferring the issue.