Three years after October 7, Israel’s election is becoming a vote on responsibility, security and trust

Three years after the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, Israel is marking the anniversary in the middle of an election campaign.

The timing matters. The country votes on October 27, and this will be Israel’s first national election since the attack and the wars that followed. Memorial ceremonies, arguments over responsibility for the security failure and competing claims about what Israel should do next are therefore not separate from the campaign. They are becoming part of its central political test.

A recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute found that October 7 is a central factor in the voting decision of 68% of Jewish Israelis and 32% of Arab Israelis. Among Jewish respondents, foreign affairs and security were the leading consideration when choosing a party.

The result does not tell us which party those voters will choose. It does show why the election is increasingly being fought over three connected questions: who bears responsibility for October 7, who can provide security now, and what political system Israelis trust to investigate the failures of the past.

October 7 is not background to this election

Reuters and the Associated Press both described the third anniversary as inseparable from the election campaign. Commemorations are taking place just 20 days before voting, while candidates across the political spectrum are invoking the attack in very different ways.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud are emphasizing the military campaigns that followed October 7 and arguing that Israel’s security requires experienced leadership capable of confronting Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and other regional threats.

Netanyahu’s opponents are focusing more heavily on the failures that allowed the attack to happen and on the government’s refusal to establish the kind of state commission of inquiry they have demanded.

The political significance of the attack also reaches directly into candidate lists. Reuters reported that at least nine people directly affected by October 7 are standing in the election, including relatives of victims, former hostages’ family members and people involved in the response to the attack. They are not all aligned politically, which is another indication that October 7 does not translate into one simple electoral message.

Accountability remains an unresolved political issue

Three years after the attack, Israel still does not have a broadly accepted national mechanism for assigning political responsibility for the failures that preceded it.

A Channel 12 survey reported earlier this year found that 66% of respondents supported a statutory state commission of inquiry whose members would be appointed under Israel’s established commission-of-inquiry process. Netanyahu has rejected that model, arguing against a panel whose composition would be determined by the judiciary and advocating a different form of investigation.

That disagreement has become more than a procedural dispute. For critics of the government, the absence of a state commission symbolizes a refusal to accept responsibility. For Netanyahu and his supporters, the argument is also tied to their broader confrontation with Israel’s judicial establishment and to claims that an inquiry structured by that system would not be politically neutral.

The election therefore gives voters a way to pass political judgment even before any final institutional inquiry establishes its own conclusions.

Security dominates — but not in a simple left-right contest

October 7 has reinforced security as a dominant electoral issue, but the current campaign does not fit neatly into Israel’s older left-versus-right framework.

Netanyahu’s principal challengers include figures with extensive security credentials of their own. Gadi Eisenkot is a former IDF chief of staff and served in the wartime cabinet after October 7. Naftali Bennett, another major opposition figure, is a former prime minister with a security-focused political profile.

That changes the nature of the competition. Much of the argument is not over whether security should be central, but over whose record, judgment and institutional approach voters trust after the country’s worst security failure in decades.

At the same time, the electorate is not uniform. The Israel Democracy Institute found major differences between Jewish and Arab Israelis in the issues influencing their vote. Among Arab citizens, crime within Arab communities ranks much higher as an immediate electoral concern.

The political divide has survived the national trauma

One of the more striking findings in recent Israeli polling is that the scale of October 7 did not erase the political divide that existed before it.

The Israel Democracy Institute found that the event is highly important to voters, yet the broader division between supporters and opponents of the current government remains recognizable. In other words, many Israelis are looking at the same national trauma and drawing very different political conclusions from it.

That is visible in current Knesset polling as well. Recent surveys have produced different results for individual parties, but several show neither Netanyahu’s traditional bloc nor the main Zionist opposition comfortably reaching the 61 seats required for a governing majority.

As Votendi’s latest polling analysis explains, the decisive question may therefore be less about which party finishes first and more about which combination of parties can actually construct a government.

The anniversary sharpens the election rather than settling it

The October 7 anniversary brings the campaign back to its most emotionally charged issue, but it does not point toward one obvious electoral outcome.

For some voters, the three years since the attack strengthen the argument for continuity in wartime and regional security policy. For others, the fact that the attack occurred under Netanyahu’s premiership makes political change and formal accountability unavoidable. Others may judge the government primarily by what happened after October 7 rather than by the intelligence and security failures that preceded it.

The result is an election in which the same event can support opposing political narratives.

The anniversary also takes place against the continuing consequences of the Gaza war and wider regional conflict. Reuters and AP report that memorial events in Israel coexist with continuing devastation and humanitarian hardship in Gaza, underscoring how far the consequences of October 7 extend beyond Israel’s domestic political debate.

What to watch before October 27

With fewer than three weeks until voting, three indicators are especially important.

First, watch whether October 7 responsibility becomes even more central than day-to-day security concerns. Second, watch whether any of the smaller parties move above or below Israel’s 3.25% electoral threshold, because relatively small movements can change the bloc arithmetic by several seats. Third, watch the parties that may sit outside the two main camps and could become essential after the election.

Israel uses a national system of proportional representation, and the government must ultimately command the confidence of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Votendi’s Israel 2026 election guide explains how the seat-allocation system and threshold work.

For live election context, polls and related analysis, follow the Votendi Israel 2026 election hub.

The third anniversary of October 7 is therefore not simply a moment of remembrance occurring during an election campaign. It is one of the issues through which Israelis are deciding what the election itself is about: responsibility for the past, security in the present, and trust in the institutions and leaders that will shape what comes next.