Israel’s election is entering a phase that cannot be understood through polling numbers or the traditional contest between Benjamin Netanyahu and his opponents alone. The political landscape is moving on two parallel tracks, the reshaping of the opposition camp and the security and military developments that could unfold over the coming weeks on Israel’s open fronts.

 

Within the opposition, Gadi Eisenkot has emerged as one of the most important variables. His Yashar party has rapidly overtaken Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid in several polls, reaching levels that put it in direct competition with Likud. But Eisenkot’s importance goes beyond the numbers. As a former IDF Chief of Staff and former member of the War Cabinet, he brings a security profile that his rivals do not possess to the same extent. This allows him to appeal to voters looking for an alternative to Netanyahu from within Israel’s military and security establishment.

 

The battle, therefore, is not only between Netanyahu and the opposition. There is a second contest taking place within the opposition itself, who will have the political mandate to lead a government if the anti-Netanyahu camp crosses the crucial 61-seat threshold—Eisenkot or Bennett? However, reaching 61 seats on paper does not necessarily mean being able to form a government. Red lines between the different components of the opposition, particularly over relations with Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties, could make the coalition arithmetic far more complicated.

 

Netanyahu, meanwhile, appears to be approaching the election according to a different calculation. Rather than securing a major victory, his more realistic objective may simply be to prevent his opponents from reaching 61 seats. If he can keep the opposing camp below a majority, he can preserve his position while waiting for a new political configuration to emerge.

 

This strategy becomes even more important given the risk of right-wing votes being lost to smaller parties that fail to cross the electoral threshold into seats held. In a closely fought election, the question may not only be who wins more votes, but also who succeeds in preventing the other side’s votes from being converted into seats.

 

But all these parliamentary calculations remain vulnerable to a more important factor. What will happen on the ground before election day? This is not an election taking place in a stable security environment. Gaza remains politically and militarily unresolved. The West Bank remains vulnerable to escalation, while the Lebanese front carries multiple possibilities. Syria is another arena where Israeli and regional calculations intersect. Iran, however, remains the actor most capable of producing a strategic development that could rapidly reshape the priorities of Israeli voters.

 

This is where one of Netanyahu’s most important advantages lies. He is not watching events from outside government, he is managing them from the center of power. The coming weeks could therefore give Netanyahu an opportunity to redefine the election itself. If he can present a military or security development as an achievement, the campaign could shift from being a referendum on his record to a different question, who is best equipped to protect Israel and manage the next phase?

 

But this advantage can also turn against him. A new escalation without clear results, the expansion of another front, a major security crisis, or an unexpected development involving Iran could lead Israeli voters to reassess the government’s performance and increase pressure on Netanyahu from within Likud and the wider right.

 

This is why reading an election scheduled for late October through September polling could be misleading. The current numbers may define the starting point, but they do not necessarily define the final result. The real battle will take place at the intersection of parliamentary arithmetic and events on the ground. In an election shaped by Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, Syria and Iran, the coming weeks will not simply be a waiting period before voting, they will, in effect, be part of the election itself. And a single event on one of Israel’s fronts may ultimately matter more than dozens of opinion polls.