Netanyahu may fall, but the far-right machinery built under him will not

What did the October election actually decide?

Israel voted on 27 October 2026, and the result settled one question while leaving the bigger one open. The final count, published on 4 November, gave Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud 27 seats, the largest tally of any single party. But his wider religious-nationalist bloc won only 53 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, eight short of the 61 needed to govern. Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party won 21 seats, and the four-party bloc behind him took 48. The Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats.

On 8 November, President Isaac Herzog tasked Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff, with forming the next government, after 67 members of the Knesset recommended him against 46 for Netanyahu. Eisenkot has 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension, deadline 6 December, extendable to 20 December.

On 10 November the new Knesset was sworn in with no new government in place. Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister. He has proposed a unity government under his own leadership, rejected by Yashar, while the two far-right ministers have publicly opposed any government led by Eisenkot.

What do we know about the two ministers at the centre of the argument?

The argument is about Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, and about what three years in office allowed them to build. Netanyahu brought both men into government in late 2022 to secure his return to power. Smotrich took the finance ministry and, in the same deal, a post inside the defence ministry with authority over civilian administration in the West Bank. Ben-Gvir became national security minister, with command of the police and the prison service.

Smotrich used the finance post to take control of part of the settlement programme. He created a separate Settlement Administration, removing land decisions from traditional military oversight, and used it to accelerate settlement approvals. In August 2025 he revived the E1 settlement plan, declaring that it would bury the idea of a Palestinian state. The Higher Planning Council then approved more than 3,400 homes in the 12-square-kilometre corridor between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, a strip that would split the West Bank in two.

Ben-Gvir reshaped the police command under him and imposed sweeping restrictions on conditions inside prisons holding Palestinian detainees. Al Jazeera reports that he led passage of a death-penalty law applying to Palestinians. He was convicted in Israel years earlier of incitement to racism and supporting a terror organisation.

In September 2025 Ben-Gvir threatened to bring down the government if Hamas remained in existence after the release of captives under the Gaza plan put forward by United States President Donald Trump. In June 2025, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway sanctioned both ministers, imposing asset freezes and travel bans for inciting violence against Palestinians. At the ballot box the far right held its ground: the two parties won 13 seats between them, the same as before, but on about 100,000 more votes than in 2022, according to Yael Shomer of Tel Aviv University. Roi Zur of Essex University puts their stable support at about 10 percent.

What remains unconfirmed about the next government?

The first open question is arithmetic. Eisenkot’s bloc holds 48 seats and needs 13 more. The ultra-Orthodox parties are the most discussed route: at least one is understood to be in talks with Eisenkot, while Smotrich has warned them Eisenkot will discard them once he has used their votes. The other route runs through the Arab-led parties, whose 19 seats would carry Eisenkot past the threshold, but he has declined to rely on them, and no agreement with either camp has been confirmed.

The second open question is whether Netanyahu’s unity offer is a genuine proposal or a holding move. He has spoken of national unity and warned of civil war if a government is formed with Arab-party support, while pressing opposition leaders to join a single government under his leadership.

The third open question is the one the whole debate turns on: whether any successor government would undo what Smotrich and Ben-Gvir built. No potential successor has pledged to dismantle the Settlement Administration, reverse the E1 approvals, or remove Ben-Gvir’s police appointees.

Why does a change of prime minister change so little?

Because the legacy under discussion is administrative, not personal. A prime minister can be replaced in a single vote; a Settlement Administration, once created, keeps issuing approvals. Police commanders, once appointed, keep their posts. Prison rules, once rewritten, stay rewritten until somebody rewrites them again. That is the core of Al Jazeera’s analysis: the far right’s work was poured into the machinery of the state, where it continues to operate without its authors.

The E1 plan shows the scale of the point. More than 3,400 homes approved in a single corridor, advanced in a year that saw the highest annual total of settlement planning ever recorded, according to data compiled by Peace Now and Ir Amim. Each approval adds to a record a new government would have to reverse one decision at a time.

The election also changed the structure of Israeli politics in a way that outlasts this coalition round. Nineteen seats for the Arab-led parties make them potential kingmakers for the first time at this scale. Readers following the coalition talks can track the earlier stages in our coverage of the Netanyahu-Eisenkot contest for the next government and the business networks behind firms tied to West Bank settlements.

Why do analysts say the legacy will survive its authors?

Arie Perliger, of the University of Massachusetts Lowell draws a sharp distinction between the two men. Ben-Gvir’s power, he argues, is populist and performative, and opposition suits him: his movement grew out of exclusion from power and treats that exclusion as proof of betrayal by the establishment. Smotrich is the reverse. His achievements were bureaucratic rather than rhetorical, built by co-opting budgets, portfolios and control over settlement policy, so he has far more to lose if he is cut off from them.

That distinction shapes what happens next. A spell in opposition would likely strengthen Ben-Gvir’s standing with his base while weakening Smotrich’s grip on the machinery he built. But Perliger doubts an opposition government would override the changes. Reversal requires sustained political will, he told Al Jazeera.

Roi Zur makes the structural point: the two movements rest on about a tenth of the electorate, serve similar voters, and are stable. Religious Zionism traces its roots to the war of 1967, and Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit descends from the outlawed Kahanist movement; neither is a one-man vehicle. The wider context is traced in our report on whether Washington is rethinking its relationship with Israel.

What happens if the far right leaves government, or is kept out?

Three paths branch from here, and each leaves the far right in a different position. If Eisenkot forms a government without them, Ben-Gvir returns to the opposition he knows how to use, while Smotrich loses the budgets and portfolios his project depends on. The Settlement Administration, however, would keep functioning unless a new government acts to close it, and its approvals would stand until challenged one by one.

If no government forms at all, Netanyahu stays on as caretaker prime minister and the country drifts toward another election, with the far-right ministers still holding their posts in the meantime. That outcome would suit Ben-Gvir, and it would leave Smotrich’s machinery running without interruption.

If a unity government emerges, with Netanyahu and Eisenkot sharing power, both ministers have already warned their ultra-Orthodox allies against cutting deals. A unity cabinet could box the far right out of the room while leaving its 13 seats, its voters and its appointed officials exactly where they are. Whichever path is taken, each year the approvals and appointments accumulate, and the cost of reversing them rises.

What should readers watch in the coming weeks?

The first marker is the ultra-Orthodox parties. If one of them breaks toward Eisenkot, his 48 seats move within reach of 61; if they hold with Netanyahu, the arithmetic points toward stalemate or a unity deal. The second marker is the Arab-led parties, whose 19 seats are the only other route to a majority, and whose price for support has not been stated in public.

The third marker is the calendar. Eisenkot’s mandate runs to 6 December, with a possible extension to 20 December. Watch also for the new Knesset’s early business and for any statement by a prospective prime minister on the Settlement Administration and the E1 approvals. For the wider regional picture, see our coverage of the Turkish president’s description of Gaza as an ecocide.