Israel’s election: The main issues in the words of the leading candidates

For an election often billed as the most consequential in Israel’s history, many issues that outsiders might expect to divide the candidates are, in fact, points of consensus among the frontrunners. None of the leading contenders in Tuesday’s election has questioned the case for unleashing a genocide on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, or the wars that have followed, including the one on Iran. Nor have most candidates for the premiership offered a clear path towards implementing a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict that was envisaged in the 1990s, or towards an equitable settlement with the Palestinians whose territory Israel occupies.