Israeli Elections: Leading Candidates Agree on Gaza, Clash Over Judiciary

The leading candidates in Tuesday's Israeli elections do not differ on the war in Gaza or the wars that followed it, including the war on Iran — these are consensus points with no contest. What separates the two camps is the future of the judicial system and the character of the ruling coalition.

Outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relies on the Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism to secure his Knesset majority, and these two parties have made passage of legislation exempting Haredi youth from military service a precondition — in contradiction of a Supreme Court ruling issued on June 25, 2024. Netanyahu's government also unveiled a plan days after taking office in 2022 to curtail the judiciary's powers, which ignited waves of mass public protests throughout 2023. In July, Government Legal Adviser Gali Baharav-Miara was stripped of broad authorities by a law permitting the government to reject her legal counsel and appoint its own lawyer before the courts.

In contrast, Netanyahu's opponents promise a political agenda similar in substance but within legal bounds and distanced from the most hardline elements of the current coalition. Yet none of the frontrunners has presented a clear path toward the two-state solution enshrined in the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.

What remains unsaid is as telling as what has been said: none of the leading candidates have questioned the legitimacy of military operations in Gaza in response to Hamas's attack on October 7, 2023, nor has any opposed continued settlement construction in the West Bank, which contradicts international law — including the E1 settlement project, which ministers in the current government explicitly describe as burying the two-state solution.