On the eve of Israel’s election, Gideon Levy warns that another Netanyahu term would deepen war, democratic repression and international isolation, with sanctions no longer unthinkable.

The list of looming catastrophes is far longer and far more frightening than just another pointless round of fighting with Iran.

Gideon Levy

Before the polls open on Tuesday, one thing must be clear: four more years with the current government is a terrifying prospect. The first bad omen has already been supplied by Donald Trump: Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory, the US president promised, would be followed immediately by another war with Iran. That alone should be enough to terrify all reasonable Israelis and to keep them awake at night.

It is difficult to imagine a worse disaster than another pointless round of fighting with Tehran, but the list of looming catastrophes is far longer and far more frightening.

The fact that Trump believes that the promise of another round of fighting will boost support for Netanyahu is deeply depressing. In Netanyahu’s later years in power, war has become the only promise on offer. This is the first irreversible damage the right has inflicted in Israel through the mainstream media: normalising the promise of war.

Four more years will leave an indelible mark on Israel’s image. By their end, one fears, these words may be prohibited from publication. Perhaps the Haaretz newspaper itself will be banned.

Legislation banning criticism of Israeli soldiers is already being discussed. Prison for ‘NAZA’ and Haaretz. Making any questioning of the rightness of Zionism a grave criminal offence is in the pipeline. We’re almost there, just one term away. Give it to them and you’ll see. The government coup will barrel ahead, this time with greater success. An election defeat for the change camp will bring the anti-Netanyahu protest movement to its knees. All the zeros, the corrupt and racist politicians will return to power, this time with even greater determination. Victory will only whet their appetite.

If the 7 October fiasco and the multi-front wars of revenge that followed, every single one of them utterly pointless, fail to bring down Netanyahu and his right-wing government, then nothing will ever bring them down. If the government’s astonishing string of failures, in areas from transport to education to the police, cannot deliver a knockout blow that brings it crashing down, then we’ll all know that the Israelis deserve this government, and that this government deserves the Israelis.

It’s simply impossible to comprehend how it is that the parties of the governing coalition even make it past the electoral threshold, how it is that they have even the slightest chance of winning once again.

The truly dramatic shift will come from the international community. It has had enough. Until now, it was civil society organisations almost everywhere that had enough of Israel. Another term like this, and governments will join them and go on the offensive. Israel will be forced to its knees. All of those who are asking, “Who needs the world anyhow?” will be stunned.

That is where the great hope lies, of course, but the price will be unbearable. The action plans are already sitting in the drawers, waiting to be pulled out. Just try Europe and the United States after another four years of Netanyahu; another four years of Israel arrogantly thumbing its nose at the entire world and at the shared demand that unites it: that Palestinians be granted their rights.

Life under sanctions will be far harder than people here imagine. They’ll affect every Israeli’s fate, pocket, dignity and freedom. The sanctions will be especially grave as they’ll follow decades of restraint and forbearance at a level that no rogue state has ever enjoyed. They’ll burst forth like a liberating torrent. After years of living under the shadow of the Holocaust, the justifiable guilt feelings and their cynical exploitation by Israel, of the falsehoods about Israel being the only democracy and a country that yearns for peace, the great explosion will come, and it will hurt.

No more David versus Goliath, no more being ’the chosen people’, the only victim in history. Instead, a rogue apartheid state that abuses thousands of detainees held without trial, carries out pogroms against innocent people, committed genocide in Gaza and whose prime minister is wanted in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

A right-wing victory will herald the end of Israel’s immunity. That, too, is something to welcome, but, again, not the heavy price that will be exacted.

Behind the curtain at the polling stations, facing the ballot slips of all the parties, even with the strongest right-wing, ultranationalist sentiments, the lust for revenge against the Arabs and the prevailing sense of absolute superiority, it is essential this time also to remember the price tag. This time it will cost us.

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-10-25/ty-article-opinion/.premium/four-more-years-of-netanyahu-will-bring-israel-to-its-knees/

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