Special Report: Analyzing the 2026 Israel Elections
One week after Israel’s October 27 election produced a 53-48-19 split with no path to 61, the Knesset’s arithmetic is now in President Herzog’s hands: results are certified Wednesday, consultations begin the same day, and the Arab parties’ expected recommendation would hand Gadi Eisenkot the first mandate. In a new report, Wikistrat maps the four scenarios for breaking the deadlock and lays out, theater by theater, how an Eisenkot government would run Israel’s wars and diplomacy differently from Netanyahu’s
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Arab Turnout Decided the Result
Overall turnout hit 77.7%, the highest since 1999, but the Arab figure is the one that changed the outcome. Arab turnout reached about 80%, up from 53.2% in 2022 and above the 1999 record, and Arab party representation nearly doubled from 10 seats to 19. The Joint List under Yousef Jabareen took 11 and Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am took 8.
The report identifies three drivers. Crime-related killings of Arab citizens ran at 244 in 2023, 230 in 2024, and 252 in 2025, with 184 recorded in 2026 so far. Distrust of law enforcement, directed specifically at National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, is the second. The Gaza war and rising settler violence in the West Bank are the third.
New Elections Are the Single Likeliest Outcome
The report assigns a 40% probability to a return to the polls. Netanyahu prefers that path: as interim prime minister he stays in office through a second round and bets on gains. A Likud-Yashar! national unity government gets 30%, conditional on concessions over the draft law and the October 7 state commission of inquiry. An Eisenkot minority government relying on outside support from the Arab parties gets 15%, and a Netanyahu coalition built by peeling Liberman and Bennett away from the Eisenkot bloc gets 10%. By law, if certification happens November 4, Herzog must assign the mandate by November 11, and the first candidate has 28 days plus a 14-day extension.
Eisenkot Is the More Hawkish Candidate on Lebanon
Both leaders would keep IDF troops in southern Lebanon. The difference is threshold. Netanyahu favors calibrated containment to avoid a multi-front war, which the report scores as a lower risk of deliberate escalation. Eisenkot, who introduced the Dahiya Doctrine in a 2008 interview and served as IDF Chief of Staff from 2015 to 2019, refuses to accept a return to pre-October 7 conditions in which Hezbollah rebuilds its border infrastructure. The report expects Lebanon, rather than Gaza, to be the theater that defines an Eisenkot government’s doctrine, with a substantially higher likelihood of major escalation in the north.
On Iran, Eisenkot Would Trade Symbolic Enrichment for Proxy Rollback
Both men hold the same red line: no Iranian nuclear weapon, and kinetic strikes if an actionable window opens. Netanyahu treats regime change as a core objective and rejects even symbolic enrichment rights, while tolerating proxy containment as a livable status quo. Eisenkot inverts that. He views military-enforced regime change as unrealistic, could accept symbolic enrichment inside an enforceable deal, and ranks Hezbollah and the proxy network at the same threat tier as the nuclear program itself. The report reads this as an opening for a settlement with Tehran and, at the same time, a higher chance of a kinetic clash across the Israel-Lebanon-Iran triangle.
Gaza Gets an 18-Month Clock and the PA Gets a Seat
Netanyahu preserves the Yellow Line, which keeps Israel in control of more than half of Gaza under the 20-point Trump plan, and rejects any governing role for the Palestinian Authority. Eisenkot aims to end Hamas rule within 18 months by bringing the PA in through diplomacy, with decisive force if talks stall. In the West Bank, where UN OCHA logged 397 settler attacks between October 1 and 26 (15 a day), the report expects an Eisenkot government to freeze the E1 plan, build security ties with the PA, and crack down on settler violence. On Syria, both candidates are open to a security accord with a stabilized Syrian state that pulls Israel back from post-Assad positions, and Eisenkot holds a clear advantage with Ankara given Erdoğan’s personal animosity toward Netanyahu.
The full report breaks down the election results, the coalition scenarios, the Eisenkot profile, and the five regional theaters (Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, and Iran), with comparative assessments of both candidates on each.
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