Why Israel’s wartime election isn’t just about the battle with Iran and Hamas

Israelis head to the polls on Tuesday in the country’s first national election since Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, a vote that is shaping up as a verdict on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet for a country that has spent three years fighting on several fronts, the campaign has been strikingly quiet on how those wars were fought. Israel’s conduct in Gaza, which led to an international arrest warrant for Netanyahu, has barely been debated. Nor have its occupation of much of southern Lebanon and parts of Syria, or the two wars it launched against Iran. All enjoy broad support among Jewish Israelis.