Israelis go to the polls on 27 October in the first legislative election since the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. The vote has the marks of a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu and on how he has led the longest war Israel has fought since the state was founded in 1948. Polls put his conservative bloc slightly behind the camp of his main rival, former chief of the General Staff Gadi Eisenkot. Neither side looks able to win the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset on its own.
Eisenkot's Yashar party holds a small polling lead over Netanyahu's Likud, with both near 23 seats. The joint list of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, Beyachad, has fallen to about 13. The prime minister's bloc is around 50 seats and the Zionist opposition is at a comparable level. Smaller parties, including the ultra-Orthodox, are expected to decide who governs, and ultra-Orthodox loyalty to Netanyahu is no longer treated as certain. Eisenkot has ruled out joining a government led by the current prime minister, though Israeli politics has often rewritten campaign pledges once majority talks begin.
Western capitals are asking how much Israeli foreign policy would actually change if Netanyahu lost. Jan Philipp Burgard, who followed the campaign from Tel Aviv for the Axel Springer correspondent network, describes the hope of a new start as a Western image: a new sheriff who might change the atmosphere and help Israel regain the trust of international partners. The article treats that hope as real and also as a risk of exaggerated expectations. A different leader could speak differently, negotiate more carefully and repair damaged relationships while still holding to security principles on which Israeli society broadly agrees.
Eisenkot's record is tied to hard-line doctrine. After the 2006 war, while leading Northern Command, he set out principles later known as the Dahiya doctrine, named for the Beirut district associated with Hezbollah: large-scale force against areas from which an adversary operates, meant to impose losses heavy enough to deter another confrontation. The idea that localities from which fire comes would become military targets remained one of the most controversial parts of that approach. It does not remove the duty to distinguish military objectives from civilians. As chief of the General Staff from 2015 to 2019 he ran the campaign between the wars, hundreds of strikes, many discreet, aimed at limiting Iran's buildup in Syria. After 7 October he entered the war cabinet. His son was killed in the fighting in Gaza. In 2024 he left the government, blaming Netanyahu for the lack of a strategy for what would follow military operations. He challenges how the war is run and the absence of a political exit. He does not question the need to defeat Hamas militarily. Last week he promised to destroy Hamas's military wing and end the group's control of the Strip within 18 months. No candidate with a real chance of becoming prime minister is centring the campaign on a Palestinian state. Eisenkot himself has dismissed that issue as irrelevant after 7 October.
Burgard's conclusion is cautious: a change of government would bring at most a correction. In Gaza, the October 2025 ceasefire stopped major operations. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, which is under Hamas administration, more than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire took effect, and the ministry's reported toll since October 2023 has passed 73,000. Hamas has not been disarmed, and postwar administration of the Strip remains unclear. Eisenkot sets an 18-month deadline. Netanyahu has promised total victory for two years. Neither formula answers who would run Gaza and under what conditions.
The West Bank is where a change of government could be easier to see. Settler violence against Palestinians has become so frequent and serious that it is a major diplomatic problem for Israel. Last month about two dozen states, led by the United Kingdom, France and Canada, imposed sanctions on violent settlers. Last week, masked settlers brutally assaulted an American journalist while she was documenting such violence, drawing condemnations that included the United States. Eisenkot promises enforcement of the law and limits on violent settlers. Netanyahu depends on nationalist-religious right partners for whom expanding settlement is an ideological goal. For European capitals that treat the West Bank as a main dispute with Israel, that would be a concrete test, measurable in investigations, sanctions, protection of threatened communities and actual application of the law.
The sharpest difference concerns Iran and the conditions for a new war. The conflict that began early this year is in a fragile pause. Direct attacks have largely stopped, but Iran continues periodic strikes on tankers crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump has indicated that he is considering a new wave of massive strikes after the US midterm elections on 3 November. Reports cited in the article say Netanyahu would press for that option and has discussed it discreetly with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, while a third American aircraft carrier is said to be heading for the Gulf. A return to fighting in November is treated as a serious possibility, with higher oil prices, costlier shipping and fresh disruption to world trade. Netanyahu has recently published a security doctrine that explicitly includes preventive strikes. Eisenkot sets a tighter condition: military action against Iran would be justified in the face of an imminent threat of acquiring a nuclear weapon, and he says he is not aware of such a threat now. The article contrasts a preventive blow, aimed at a danger that could grow worse later, with preemption of an attack judged imminent, pointing to June 1967 as the usual example of preemption and the 1981 strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor as prevention. That gap is described as one of the few electoral differences that could directly change the chance of a new regional war.
Eisenkot has also criticised Netanyahu's talk of turning Israel into a super-Sparta, arguing that the prime minister has badly damaged Israel's relationship with American society beyond the administration in office. US support means ammunition, interceptors, military cooperation and diplomatic cover, and it also depends on Congress, the parties and voters. Loss of sympathy among young Americans and inside the Democratic Party is presented as a long-term vulnerability even if the personal tie between the Israeli prime minister and the US president stays close. Trump has his own interests. The relationship with Israel is expected to remain close whoever forms the next government, and Netanyahu's departure would not erase the grounds for confrontation between Washington and Tehran. Trump has intervened in the Israeli campaign, publicly backing the current prime minister on social media. Analyst Dahlia Scheindlin notes that Netanyahu's overall position has not changed fundamentally in two years and that his coalition has stayed below a majority throughout. A message from Washington can mobilise voters for a day. It is much harder, in the final week, to repair a loss of confidence that two years of war have not removed.
For Romania, the election reaches beyond a general interest in the Middle East. A renewed war with Iran in November could make oil more expensive and trade routes less secure. The effects would pass through a Europe that is already carrying the cost of supporting Ukraine and pressure from its own economic problems. For consumers and companies, a regional crisis can quickly mean dearer fuel, delayed shipments and extra costs.
The military channel is separate. If the report of a third US carrier sailing for the Gulf is confirmed, the article says it should also be read against the reassessment of conventional American forces in Europe. Washington's resources are large and finite. The Middle East, the Indo-Pacific and the eastern flank sometimes draw on the same kinds of capacity: air defence, intelligence, aviation, logistics and munitions. An escalation in the Gulf does not automatically mean forces leaving the Black Sea. It does mean extra demand on American resources and fresh competition for the attention of political and military leaders. For Bucharest, a prolonged regional conflict can affect how available support is and how fast other commitments are met, even without a declared change of priorities.
The bilateral channel is direct. Israel's defence industry takes part in equipment programmes for the Romanian Army, and a large community of people from Romania and their descendants lives in Israel. The ties are military, economic and human, beyond the relationship between two governments. An Israeli cabinet more intent on repairing relations with Europe, including through measures in the West Bank, would make it easier for Bucharest to hold the balance between partnership with Israel and common European Union positions. That would not remove every disagreement. It would leave more room for cooperation and fewer moments in which Romanian diplomacy has to manage tension between important partners.
Whoever wins, the campaign shows how carefully a change of leader has to be separated from a change of security policy. An alternation in Israel could matter more for the timing and conditions of a new war with Iran than for the military objectives in Gaza. For Romania and for other small and medium-sized states, that difference is practical: foreign policy has to be built on what a new government can change and on what domestic consensus will push it to continue.