To some, the attack fulfilled long-term right-wing warnings that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza would yield disaster; and the attack was incontrovertible proof that Palestinians will never live in peace with Israel.
The standoff raises crucial questions. In three years since Oct. 7, how has the attack changed Israeli society? And how will the answer affect upcoming elections in Israel?
The losses Israelis suffered on Oct. 7 and since then have affected the country collectively and profoundly. For two years, many Israelis went from demonstration to demonstration demanding that their government prioritize a deal with Hamas to release Israeli hostages. Hundreds of thousands have spent the last three years in and out of active reserve duty.
Moreover, the destruction of Palestinian life and society, still ongoing, will one day force a terrible reckoning within Israel.
Attitudes towards a two-state solution
In December 2022, almost a year before Oct. 7, support for peace through a two-state solution hit a historic low. In the joint Palestinian-Israeli survey I conduct together with colleagues at Tel Aviv University and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, support stood at 39% of Israelis that year—the lowest since the 1990s. Among Jewish respondents, just 34% supported a two-state solution, and 37% believed Israel should permanently annex the West Bank while Palestinians would have limited rights.
Palestinian attitudes in 2022 were similar. Just one-third supported two states. Both sides showed a mirror-image majority who distrusted the other. In surveys by the IDI from that same time, 59% of Jewish Israelis defined themselves as right-wing; just 12% said they were left-wing.
Israel has changed, but this change began years before Oct. 7 2023. In 2010, no fewer than 71% of Israelis supported a two-state solution in the joint surveys. The years that followed were plagued by stagnation and dissipation of any peace process, regular wars with Hamas, and a heavily nationalist government in Israel. It stands to reason that these phenomena pushed Israeli society further to the right. Support for the two-state solution eroded slowly, then rapidly by the end of the decade.
Study after study shows that Arab citizens of Israel have remained the strongest supporters of peace, before and after the current wars. But with Jewish Israeli and Palestinian attitudes so dismal in the years before Oct. 7, the chances of resurgent violence almost seemed inevitable.
The politics of peace
Another thing that hasn’t changed in Israel during the last three years of war: hopes for peace. The number of Israeli Jews who self-describe as left-wing has barely shifted. In a May survey for the Institute for National Security Studies, about 20% of the total population, Jews and Arabs, define themselves as left-wing, and a similar share typically say they are centrist. These groups embrace a commitment to democracy, liberal values, separation of religion and state, and reject the religious fundamentalism of the current government.
Do peace attitudes even matter, when there is no peace process? That may be theoretical for now, but elections aren’t. Israelis will be voting on Oct. 27. Polls show the voters deeply divided, just as they were in the elections held between 2019 and 2022.
At first glance, these shifts might seem antithetical. Aren’t these ideological and electoral trends moving in contradictory directions: more right-wing, but a majority against the current government?
But if all mainstream polls show the anti-Netanyahu parties winning, including right-wing opposition parties, shouldn’t that mean a decisive outcome against him this time? Not quite: no poll shows Israel’s Jewish, Zionist parties reaching a majority in October.
Those Arab or Palestinian citizens of Israel have been stalwart supporters of peace, and were among the victims of Oct. 7. A large majority, nearly three-quarters of them, want an Arab party to join Israel’s governing coalition, according to polling by the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University.
Netanyahu has much working against him: ongoing corruption trials, the fact that he was the leader who presided over the terrible failures of Israel to prevent Oct. 7, three years of wars, and the unconscionable destruction of Gaza. Yet he could still form the next government if the opposition can’t do it—and lead it.
In that case, the same conditions in place on Oct. 6 2023, such as Israeli annexation of Palestinian areas, now with aspirations for Gaza as well as the West Bank, suppression of Palestinian self-determination, ongoing occupation and wars with no end in sight, will continue.
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