If you want to understand what Israelis are voting for in this election, head to its borders.
I’ve spent the last three days traversing Israel’s boundaries as the country chooses its next parliament, voting for the first time since the October 7 massacre and the Gaza war.
In Metula, Israel’s northernmost village, locals have three seconds to take cover if a rocket launches from Kfarkela, the Hezbollah stronghold immediately across the Lebanese border.
From a vantage point overlooking southern Lebanon, piles of rubble mark where the Israeli army discovered Hezbollah tunnels, weapons caches and anti-tank missile launch sites. Thousands of soldiers deployed across that border in Lebanon, as well as in Syria and Gaza, have cast their ballots at military polling stations in enemy territory.
The ruins of Kfarkela overlooking the fields of Metula[Missing Credit]
Everyone here is voting for security; what divides them is how it can be achieved and who should be trusted to deliver it.
At Kibbutz Yiftah, a mile from Lebanon in the Upper Galilee, Daniella Porat Penso, 59, was used to seeing Hezbollah flags flying along the border above the fruit orchards of her home.
No surprise then that she believes Israeli troops need to remain in Lebanon until Hezbollah is defeated. But Penso is frustrated by the length of the war. “We have been using force for three years; we’re exhausted,” she says, and worries that Israel’s military campaign has changed the character of the country, leaving it “a bully, drunk on our strength, divided among ourselves”.
Daniella Porat Penso[Missing Credit]
A life coach and Buddhist teacher, she wants a leader with energy who will pursue diplomacy alongside military force and bring the country together. She was choosing between Gadi Eisenkot and Yair Golan.
Many of these border communities were founded by Israel’s early socialist pioneers. The kibbutzim, established on principles of shared property and cultivating the land, have changed almost beyond recognition from those beginnings, but their politics remain largely liberal.
Asaf Langleben, the local council head, is trying to bring residents home after an 18-month evacuation while preparing the Upper Galilee for further conflict.
Mayor of Upper Galilee Asaf Langleben[Missing Credit]
In nearby Kiryat Shmona, only around half the population has returned. Families with young children are reluctant to come back, school rolls have fallen, and Langleben reports rising violence and mental health problems.
Retired commander Kobi Marom, surveying southern Lebanon from a nearby lookout, estimates Hezbollah still has 30,000 rockets and missiles. Marom wants a state commission of inquiry into October 7 and will vote for Eisenkot, an old military friend whose son was killed in Gaza and can speak to Israelis who have paid the highest price in the country's military campaigns. For Marom, the election is “all about responsibility”.
That question of responsibility has dominated the campaign.
The opponents of Netanyahu, who has governed Israel for roughly a quarter of the country’s history, have made the failures of October 7 central to their calls for change, as well as the pressure on soldiers carrying the burden of serving while many in the strictly-Orthodox community dodge the draft.
But both sides claim the stronger argument on national security. Bibi’s supporters are asking voters to consider what followed the massacre – under Netanyahu, Israel killed Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, struck Iran’s military infrastructure and fought on seven fronts.
In the south along Route 232, which runs past the communities attacked by Hamas on October 7, Shaha Zafran, 25, spent 36 hours in her safe room at Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha.
Three years later, she is home, cradling her two-month-old son, Ori.
Shaha Zafran and baby Ori at Kibbutz Ein HaShlosha[Missing Credit]
Zafran previously voted for Netanyahu and thinks he managed the war well – she struggles to imagine who could have done a better job – but this time will vote for Naftali Bennett.
“I think Bibi is a good leader, but we need a change,” she says. “Israelis are starting to hate each other.”
She is perhaps a sign that older loyalties, shaped by family, class and identity, are weakening. Bennett has courted younger Likud voters whose allegiances may not be as fixed as those of their parents and grandparents.
Further along the Gaza border, Hila Felon has a harsher judgment. Her moshav, Netiv HaAsara, sits against the Gaza fence, and 20 members of the small community were lost in the first two hours of the attack.
Before October 7, a Hamas watchtower overlooking the moshav – which was originally established in Sinai before being relocated in 1982 under the peace agreement with Egypt – displayed a banner calling for its destruction. “We always knew what they wanted,” she says, believing Israel had become too complacent about the threat from Hamas in the years before the massacre.
Her partner’s cousin, Eden Yerushalmi, was among six hostages murdered in Hamas tunnels, and Felon believes Netanyahu put politics ahead of an agreement that could have saved their lives.
“You can forgive a professional failure; you cannot forgive moral failure,” she says.
Hila Felon on November 19, 2023 in Netiv HaAsara, Israel. (Getty Images)Getty Images
She intended to vote for Yair Golan’s Democrats and, despite everything, has not abandoned her belief in peace. “I can’t say I don’t believe in peace. What do I believe in? War?”
In nearby Sderot, there is a different political assessment.
The city was overrun by Hamas gunmen on October 7 and has endured decades of rockets from Gaza. Unlike Kiryat Shmona, which is isolated from Israel’s economic centre, Sderot has continued to grow, with its population increasing by 10 per cent since the massacre.
Its Likud mayor, Alon Davidi, expects Israel will have to fight again. Neither Hamas nor Iran have abandoned their ambition to destroy the Jewish state, he says, and he hopes the remaining two years of Donald Trump’s presidency will allow Israel to act decisively against Tehran. In Gaza, he wants the army to hold its positions along the yellow line. “We cannot allow terrorists to live very close to the border again.”
Posters in support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sit at the entrance to Sderot on October 15, 2026. (Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images
Away from the borders, at a Shabbat dinner in northern Tel Aviv, young Orthodox technology workers and reservists discuss their experiences fighting in Gaza and echo Davidi's perspective. This group's politics are firmly on the right, with support for Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir contrasting with the left-leaning tendencies of young voters in much of the West.
One American-born technology worker cannot imagine Israel’s long-term future surrounded by enemies – he can only see the short term in the Jewish state. He welcomes Trump’s willingness to allow strikes on Iran and hopes further attacks against its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes “could give us a few more years”.
But across town, Hannah Jacobs, who moved to Tel Aviv from north west London last year, is conflicted about Israel’s actions. She says the opportunity to vote was part of what justified her decision to move: “I have a voice.”
“I feel the future of the Jewish people is in my hands with this election. It’s a big responsibility,” she says. Voting for the Democrats, she adds: “This vote here is more important than any election I have ever voted for in the UK.”
Outside Tel Aviv’s bars in the nights ahead of the vote, pro-democracy stalls operate past midnight, telling young Israelis about their rights, while along the beachfront, late-night runners wave flags of rival parties. In Israel’s coalition system, every vote counts towards who forms the next government and tens of thousands of Israelis abroad have flown in to vote.
In 1977, four years after the Yom Kippur War, Israelis voted to oust the Labour establishment that had governed since independence and brought Likud to power for the first time, changing the political order for a generation. Whether October 7 will produce a comparable shift and a new era of leaders emerges hangs in the air.
Election day itself is a public holiday, and there is a palpable energy in the streets as queue to polling stations stretch down streets across the country.
This is a Jewish state and a democracy in the Middle East holding an election in the middle of its longest war. As they argue over what sort of country Israel wants to become, no one here is taking this vote for granted.
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