‘Dirty Dealings’ — Might Netanyahu & the Right ‘win’ the election?

Ma’ariv: “Netanyahu’s nightmare — His coalition’s chances of securing 61 seats have plummeted to an unimaginable level” /

Times of Israel: Can political violence be averted?

Netanyahu’s Electoral Strategy — ‘Preventing the formation of any other government is tantamount to a victory in which he remains interim PM’ /

Ha’aretz: Losing Touch With Reality — Israeli watchdog FakeReporter warns of “immeasurably effective internal influence campaign being conducted ... to disrupt the election in Israel” /

Ha’aretz: The Dark Tech Running Israel’s Election Campaigns — Tech tools once used to track Iranian nuclear scientists are now being used on Israeli voters /

Trojan Horses Quit Likud — Are Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein Netanyahu proxies? /

Can ‘Israeli Arabs’ shatter Netanyahu’s election maths? /

Klein Halevi, Senior Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute: ‘What if Netanyahu wins reelection? “I can’t even allow myself to think about the possibility”’ /

Ha’aretz Editorial: Pre-Election Land Grab — “Smotrich’s ‘decisive plan’ is in full swing” /

Haaretz: “The Time Has Come to Move Beyond Zionism and Become Israelis”

[These compilations are drawn from analysis & commentary by leading Israeli political & security commentators, predominantly translated from Hebrew sources — as reports published in Hebrew often provide a different window on Israeli internal discourse. Minor edits have been made for clarity during translation].

CONSEQUENTIAL OBSERVATIONS —

“Netanyahu’s nightmare: His coalition’s chances of securing 61 seats have plummeted to an unimaginable level” (Matti Tuchfeld, Ma’ariv, 9 August):

The election campaign is only just beginning, but party headquarters are already identifying a trend that is particularly troubling for the right-wing bloc: whilst the Israeli public itself has shifted to the right in the wake of 7 October and the war, the coalition parties are failing to translate this shift into seats …

There are currently between 15 and 25 seats held by right-wing voters who are not prepared at this stage to vote for any of the three main right-wing parties in the coalition: Likud, Religious Zionism and Jewish Power. This gap creates a confusing reality: on the one hand, the assessment is that the public is shifting to the right in three key areas – tradition and Judaism, a tougher security stance, and support for settlement in Judea and Samaria alongside opposition to the handover of territories. On the other hand, right-wing parties are not gaining ground accordingly in the polls … Party headquarters are trying to work out what is driving these voters away. According to [recent] analysis, the two main reasons are the composition of the Likud list and the alliance with the ultra-Orthodox parties …

The opposition [currently] holds the advantage in the seat count at this stage: in 57.53 per cent of the simulations, it has more seats than the coalition, compared with 38.87 per cent in which the coalition holds the advantage … As long as those 15 to 25 seats do not coalesce back into a single bloc, every poll is essentially a snapshot of a political landscape that is still very far from being decided.