Israel's government may change hands in this week's election, but one thing won't change, argues Ezra Klein in the New York Times: The basic outlook Benjamin Netanyahu sold to his country has already won. Klein writes that the opposition bloc currently leading in the polls is largely campaigning inside Netanyahu's framework—rejecting a Palestinian state, promising military solutions in Gaza and Lebanon, and shunning Arab-Israeli parties as coalition partners. Netanyahu might lose at the ballot box, Klein contends, but only after his rivals have embraced his assumptions about power, security, and the Palestinians. The cost, he writes, is that while Israel has tightened its regional dominance, it has sharply eroded its global standing.
"Most Israeli Jews now see the world the way Netanyahu has long seen it," writes Klein. "That is Netanyahu's great victory. But it is matched by his great loss: Much of the world now sees Israel the way Gazans see it." Meaning, as a "brutal aggressor." Klein traces how Netanyahu's strategy of blocking Palestinian statehood, bolstering Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority, and pursuing "total victory" after Oct. 7 aligned with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar's own ruthless calculus of sacrificing Palestinian lives for political gain. Israel now faces rising accusations of apartheid and genocide, weakening support in both US parties, and looming isolation. As Israeli political commentator Ari Shavit tells Klein, "We won the Middle East, but we lost the world." Read the full piece.
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