Israel Is About to Change Its Government. It Will Not Change Its Wars.

The Knesset voted 110 to 0 to dissolve itself. Polls show Netanyahu loses the election. But every party positioned to replace him supported the Gaza war, the Lebanon war and the Iran strikes just as enthusiastically as he did. Some criticized him for not going far enough. Here is what that means for 30 million people living inside the consequences.

Photo by Raman Shaunia on Unsplash

On May 20, 2026, something remarkable happened in the Israeli Knesset.

Israeli lawmakers voted unanimously to dissolve the Knesset, initiating a process that could result in a snap election and the potential ousting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

One hundred and ten votes in favor. Zero against. Not a single member of the Israeli parliament voted to preserve the current government.

The immediate cause was specific and almost mundane in comparison to the wars surrounding it. Netanyahu’s coalition failed to pass legislation exempting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from mandatory military service. A key faction withdrew its support. Faced with a potential rebellion he could not control, Netanyahu’s own Likud Party submitted the dissolution bill, calculating that choosing the timing of his own defeat was preferable to having it chosen for him.

But the significance of what happened that day extends far beyond the mechanics of coalition arithmetic. Israel is about to hold its first national election since October 2023. And the question that almost nobody covering the story has properly answered is this.

What exactly will change?

What the Polls Say Netanyahu Will Lose

The electoral picture for Netanyahu could not be clearer or more damning.

Opinion polls consistently show Netanyahu would lose the first national vote since October 2023. Since Israel launched its war on Gaza in late 2023, polls have shown Netanyahu’s support declining with each passing month of the conflict.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid welcomed the upcoming election as a chance to move on from what he described as one of the worst governments in Israeli history. He slammed Netanyahu for failing to win in Lebanon, Gaza and Iran, for overseeing unprecedented increases in violent crime, and for what he called the decline of Israel’s international status to a low point never seen before in the country’s history.

The personal dimensions of Netanyahu’s situation add layers that no other wartime democratic leader in recent memory has faced simultaneously.

Netanyahu still faces a long-running corruption trial. Israel’s President Isaac Herzog is mediating talks to broker a plea deal in the case, which could see the 76-year-old Netanyahu retiring from politics as part of the deal. Netanyahu’s health could also be an issue. He recently disclosed that he was successfully treated for prostate cancer, and in 2023 he was fitted with a pacemaker.

A corruption trial. A possible plea deal that ends his career. Prostate cancer. A pacemaker. And an election he appears likely to lose. Netanyahu is governing through a war on multiple fronts while managing the most personal and political vulnerability of his 30-year career in Israeli leadership.

That story is compelling and genuinely significant. It is also incomplete without the question that the coverage consistently avoids.

What Will Not Change Regardless of Who Wins

Even if Netanyahu and his right-wing allies are ousted from government, Israel’s operations in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and the wars against Lebanon and Iran enjoy broad support across the Israeli political spectrum. Israel’s opposition parties have backed the war on Gaza, the expansion of settlements, and the war on Lebanon just as fervently as Netanyahu’s coalition, and in some cases have criticized him for not going far enough.

Read Lapid’s opposition speech again with that context in place.

He did not criticize Netanyahu for starting wars he should not have started. He criticized him for failing to win the wars he did start. He did not argue that 60 percent of Gaza should not be militarily occupied. He argued that the occupation should have produced a more decisive outcome. He did not challenge the fundamental direction of Israeli policy. He challenged the competence with which that policy was executed.

Netanyahu has pushed for the latest possible election date, believing it will give him more time to potentially push forward military and diplomatic successes in Lebanon, Iran and Gaza. The prime minister pledged total victory as his metric for success in the war against Hamas in December 2023.

Total victory. That standard, which Netanyahu set for himself in December 2023, has not been achieved in Gaza, in Lebanon or in relation to Iran. His opponents’ primary argument is not that total victory was the wrong goal. It is that he has been incapable of delivering it.

What Comes Before the Vote

In the near term, the more pressing concern is what the current government will do to shore up its electoral standing before it leaves office. Precedent suggests that means further escalation.

That observation should be read with the seriousness it deserves. Governments heading toward electoral defeat in the middle of wars have a documented historical tendency to seek battlefield developments that can reshape the political narrative before voters decide. Netanyahu himself has been accused of timing military operations with political considerations in mind throughout his career, an accusation he has consistently denied.

With elections potentially as soon as September 2026, and with polls showing him losing, the coming months of the Gaza operation, of the Lebanon ceasefire’s fragility, and of the Iran nuclear negotiation in Islamabad, will all be conducted against the backdrop of a prime minister who needs something to change before his electorate judges him.

This wartime atmosphere has strengthened executive power while simultaneously intensifying parliamentary instability. That contradiction defines Israeli governance in 2026. The state demands unity, but politics produces fragmentation.

The Question Nobody Is Asking About September

When Israelis vote, potentially in September 2026, they will be asked to choose between parties that differ significantly on domestic issues, on judicial reform, on the role of ultra-Orthodox communities in Israeli society, and on the specific competence of the current leadership.

They will not be offered a meaningful choice about the fundamental direction of Israeli military policy toward Gaza, toward Lebanon or toward Iran. The parties contending for power exist in a political culture where the core strategic decisions of the past three years enjoy broad multipartisan support, and where criticism of those decisions tends to be directional, arguing for more force rather than less, rather than questioning the decisions themselves.

That is not a judgment about whether those decisions are right or wrong. It is a description of what the election actually is and is not.

Thirty million people live inside the consequences of those decisions. In Gaza, where one in five families is eating once a day according to UN data released this week. In Lebanon, where a ceasefire that has been violated daily for months is the primary barrier between the current situation and something worse. In Israel itself, where families of the remaining hostages have been protesting for months that the war’s continuation has not brought their relatives home.

None of them get to vote in September.

The people who do vote will choose a new manager for a set of policies that the available candidates have largely agreed on.

That is what this election is.

And understanding that is more important than knowing which polling number Netanyahu trails by this week.