Meron Rapoport
+972 Magazine / January 23, 2026
Despite the spectacular collapse of Netanyahu’s ‘conflict management’ doctrine, both he and his staunchest critics are campaigning on its revival.
With both the Israeli general elections and the U.S. midterms approaching, 2026 is shaping up to be a tough year for political forecasts. The Israeli vote could redraw the domestic political map, potentially deposing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while the U.S. elections could significantly weaken President Donald Trump’s standing and constrain his freedom of action.
Yet there is one prediction that can be made with confidence: Whatever the election results, Israel’s entire political and military establishment will remain united around a desire to dial the clock back to October 6, 2023.
This aspiration does not signal a return to normalcy or calm; on the contrary, Israel’s internal tensions are likely to deepen in the coming year. This is not merely because the period preceding the war was already among the most turbulent in the country’s history, nor because election years tend to intensify political tensions. This time, the polarization runs much deeper.
On one side, we have a government that devotes itself daily to delegitimizing the judiciary, the media, and any dissenting voice. On the other side, we have an opposition that views Netanyahu and his partners as the embodiment of absolute evil, and their continued rule as a threat to both the state’s survival and their own future. What, then, does the aspiration to return the country to October 6 actually mean?
Before the war, the Israeli public was sold a common thesis by politicians across the political spectrum: that Israel could not or need not resolve its relationship with the Palestinians living under its rule, and that Israel’s economic, social, and diplomatic might could grow independent of it. On this basis, the military adopted a doctrine that abandoned any pretense of seeking a political solution, focusing instead on “managing” the conflict through deterrence and what it calls the “campaign between wars.”
October 7 shattered these assumptions. The army collapsed in the face of an attack carried out by Palestinians “with flip-flops, Kalashnikovs, and pickup trucks,” as Netanyahu later put it in defending his policy of facilitating Qatari cash transfers to Hamas. For the first time since 1948, Israel lost control over parts of its sovereign territory. More than 1,100 civilians and soldiers were killed on what became the darkest day in the country’s history.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were mobilized to fight in Gaza and Lebanon. Hundreds were killed, and many thousands wounded. The country’s economic resources were funnelled into the war effort, and the war crimes Israel committed in Gaza transformed it into an international pariah in the eyes of the world.
Among the achievements claimed by Hamas in its recent document summarizing the Gaza war is restoring the Palestinian question to the center of global, regional, and Israeli discourse. While Hamas conveniently ignores its own failures — most importantly the devastation its actions inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — it is difficult to dismiss this particular success. At its core, then, returning to October 6 reflects a collective Israeli desire to once again remove “the Palestinian issue” from the political agenda.
Putting the genie back in the bottle
Over the past two years, the question of Israel’s relations with the Palestinians has permeated nearly every aspect of Israeli life: from mass demonstrations demanding the release of hostages, to the political struggle over drafting the ultra-Orthodox, to the ballooning budget deficit and the transformation of Israel’s foreign relations. The ceasefire has allowed various actors within the Israeli system to imagine that this genie might yet be forced back into the bottle.
First and foremost among them is Netanyahu himself. The notion that the Palestinians can simply be bypassed is largely his creation, and in the years leading up to October 2023, it even appeared to be working. Israel’s diplomatic and economic standing improved despite — Netanyahu would likely say because of — its continued occupation, settlement expansion, and denial of Palestinian self-determination. Meanwhile, the so-called Israeli “peace camp” withered into irrelevance.
As Netanyahu argued in a 2022 op-ed in Haaretz, the Abraham Accords were, in his view, definitive proof that “the road to peace does not go through Ramallah; it bypasses it.” From this same logic flowed the idea of Hamas as an “asset” and the longstanding policy of facilitating funding for the group. The security establishment, even when sceptical of Netanyahu’s broader thesis, implemented it in practice: maintaining the occupation and the siege on Gaza, while relying on deterrence and periodic “rounds” of fighting against Hamas.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published in the same year, Netanyahu boasted that he had created an “iron triangle of peace,” resting on economic, diplomatic, and military power. On October 7 and in the two years that followed, all three sides of that triangle cracked.
Even if one does not fully accept the argument that Israel has become a “zombie economy” marching toward collapse, Netanyahu himself has conceded that the Israeli economy is under severe strain. Israel’s diplomatic isolation is harder to dispute still, with the country now appearing almost entirely dependent on the whims of Donald Trump — one day publicly urging Israel’s president to pardon Netanyahu in his corruption trial, the next humiliating him by explaining how he forced Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire with Hamas.
The prime minister can argue that the military side of the triangle remains intact, and perhaps is even stronger than it was on October 6. Israel now controls more than half of the Gaza Strip; Hamas has been significantly weakened; Hezbollah has been battered as Israel freely bombs Lebanon; Israeli forces have seized territory in Syria with little response; and Iran has absorbed substantial blows.
Yet all of these fronts, as Netanyahu’s critics rightly note, have “remained open.” Hamas, though degraded, still governs nearly half of Gaza. The “total victory” promised to the Israeli public never materialized. Polls show that more Israelis believe the war in Gaza ended in a draw than think either Israel or Hamas decisively won.
For Netanyahu, however, this stalemate appears to be the preferred outcome, because it is, in effect, a return to the pre-October 6 paradigm of “managing the conflict.” The prime minister’s long history of bolstering Hamas rule in Gaza exemplifies this political logic: fragmenting the Palestinian national movement geographically and institutionally, and thereby preventing the emergence of a Palestinian state.
Obscuring the failure of a doctrine
At least in theory, Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza includes the return of the Palestinian Authority to the Strip, the lifting of the siege, and references to “Palestinian self-determination and statehood” — all developments that Netanyahu views as existential threats. Yet beyond these elements, Netanyahu is doing everything in his power to prevent the agreement from advancing to its second phase not despite the fact that it includes the disarming of Hamas, but because it does. As long as Hamas remains in control of Gaza, there is no risk of any meaningful political process.
Before October 7, Netanyahu and the security establishment did not regard Hamas as a serious military threat. Now, after Gaza has been devastated and much of Hamas’ leadership eliminated, Netanyahu likely believes the organization poses even less of a danger than before.
In this sense, Netanyahu’s interests and those of the military closely align. Both seek to obscure the scale of the failure of October 7 and the collapse of the entire doctrine of “deterrence” that preceded it. And through ongoing strikes in Lebanon and Gaza, as well as through the looming threat of another war with Iran, both want to divert public attention from the fact that Israel has, in practice, returned to October 6.
Netanyahu and the army — which, following recent leadership changes, have also become closer ideological allies — no longer even pretend to offer the Israeli public the prospect of peace. What they promise instead is a revival of the deterrence doctrine, which means permanent conflict and an ever more violent “campaign between wars.”
Netanyahu’s coalition partners on the nationalist-religious-fascist right likewise favor a return to October 6. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir would have preferred that Israel pursue a “final solution” in Gaza, removing Palestinians in one way or another from the territory and rebuilding Jewish settlements. But once it became clear that such a course was untenable, they were prepared to accept Netanyahu’s narrative and support freezing the situation in Gaza as it stands to prevent any political negotiations — an echo of Israel’s strategy in “disengaging” from the Strip in 2005.
As long as Israel does not proceed in practice to the ceasefire’s second phase — in the form of withdrawing troops and allowing the entry of international forces, with the associated political “dangers” of offering Palestinians even a sliver of future hope — Smotrich can exploit his control over the Civil Administration to accelerate the de facto annexation of the West Bank, while Ben Gvir can leverage his authority over the police to intensify repression of Palestinian citizens of Israel and quash any political opposition to the government.
Opposition in name only
Even if he never explicitly invokes the phrase “October 6,” Netanyahu’s election strategy will likely rest on a return to the familiar paradigm of “managing the conflict.”
He will say that he has improved the “balance of deterrence” vis-à-vis the entire Middle East while simultaneously blocking any progress toward a Palestinian state. He will stress that despite the erosion of Israel’s standing in global public opinion, Donald Trump remains firmly at his side — and that this, ultimately, is what matters (the decision to award Trump an “Israel Peace Prize” on the upcoming Independence Day fits neatly into this narrative). And barring a major economic crisis before the elections, Netanyahu is also likely to once again speak of the “iron triangle” of military, diplomatic, and economic power.
But what is striking is that the prime minister’s opposition, both political and journalistic, largely accepts the same premise: that the only language Israel can speak with the Palestinians — and with the region more broadly — is the language of force.
This is so despite the fact that this very policy collapsed on October 7; that Netanyahu’s support for Hamas represents one of his most serious vulnerabilities in Israeli public opinion; and the mounting pressure for an independent state commission of inquiry into the political and security failures that enabled the Hamas attacks to be so deadly. Instead of challenging Netanyahu on the terrain of “managing the conflict,” the opposition largely abandons that field and concentrates on issues such as the judicial overhaul, “Qatargate,” and corruption.
This failure is evident in the handling of the Qatargate affair. That individuals closest to Netanyahu, operating from within his own office, were paid by Qatar and promoted its interests during wartime is a political scandal of the first order — one that has created fissures even among his supporters. The label of “funder of Hamas” has begun to stick to Netanyahu.
Yet the opposition and much of the liberal media stop short of drawing the central conclusion. The story is not that Qatar bribed Netanyahu’s office to help Hamas, but rather the opposite: that Netanyahu courted Qatar to fund Hamas, above all to block the emergence of a Palestinian state. Were they willing to make that argument explicitly, they could advance the claim that preventing the next October 7 requires doing precisely the opposite of what Netanyahu did: ending the occupation and enabling Palestinian statehood.
Naftali Bennett, who polls suggest is the most likely figure to lead an opposition government, is not expected to offer a meaningful alternative to Netanyahu. The same is true of other lawmakers who comprised the so-called “government of change” that Bennett briefly headed in 2021-22. On the contrary, Bennett’s success rests precisely on the promise of returning to October 6 and to the logic of “managing the conflict.”
Bennett offers Israeli society a return to “normality” and to respect for state institutions, and a “correction” in relations between different segments of Israeli society — and this, as his not-so-subtle message suggests, can be achieved only by pushing the Palestinians aside. It bears noting that Bennett himself continued the policy of allowing the transfer of Qatari money to Hamas during his tenure as prime minister, albeit via a more roundabout mechanism.
Nearly all leaders of the Zionist parties in the opposition bloc are similarly keen to return to “managing the conflict.” This is most clearly reflected in their stated refusal to form a government reliant on Arab parties — whether Hadash, Balad, Ta’al, or even Mansour Abbas’ Ra’am — in part because they would demand movement toward a political settlement and a Palestinian state.
In other words, opposition parties that frame the coming election as a struggle of life and death against Netanyahu’s “evil regime” are nevertheless prepared for him to remain in power, so long as it means no peace process with the Palestinians.
No going back
According to a September 2025 poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, roughly three-quarters of Jewish Israelis deny that Palestinians have a right to a state — an increase of 11 percent compared to before the war. But this can be set against another finding: A slim majority of opposition voters support relying on Arab parties to form a government, even though opposition leaders categorically reject this option. Public opinion, in other words, is more malleable than it first appears.
Yet even if the entire Israeli political system — coalition and opposition alike — wants to go back to October 6, it is far from clear that such a return is possible. Freezing the situation in Gaza will be extraordinarily difficult: It is impossible to keep 2 million people under the current conditions indefinitely; Hamas remains in place; and Trump’s own prestige — as well as that of the states that mediated the agreement and wield influence in Washington, like Turkey and Qatar — depends on tangible progress in Gaza.
Global public opinion has shifted dramatically in favour of the Palestinians, and even if the sense of urgency has receded as the pace of destruction in Gaza has slowed, it is unlikely to reverse. The path toward further normalization with the Arab world appears blocked, and within Israel itself, even in the absence of active fighting in Gaza, the shadow of war continues to hover.
Protests calling for a non-politicized commission of inquiry and resistance to ultra-Orthodox conscription are inseparable from the war, as is the widespread rejection of the current right-wing government reflected in nearly every poll. The pervasive sense of political deadlock undoubtedly contributes to the fact that more than 200,000 Israelis have left the country since this Netanyahu government took office.
The fact that there will be no return to October 6 does not necessarily mean that Israel is headed somewhere better. The attempt to force the genie unleashed on October 7 back into the bottle could itself prove extremely violent — as the escalation of military operations in the West Bank, police crackdowns against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and even the intensifying repression of Jewish anti-government activists may indicate.
But another outcome remains possible as well. Much depends on whether the Israeli opposition recognizes that “managing the conflict” is Netanyahu’s home turf — and that removing him from power will require refusing to play on it.
Meron Rapoport is an editor at Local Call (Tel Aviv)
