Arab states see hawks ruling Israel no matter who wins vote, but still sense room for change

Much is at stake for Israel in the upcoming elections. Three years of war on seven fronts have sharpened concern among the country’s 10 million citizens over how the next government will shape foreign and domestic policies.

But Israelis are not the only ones closely monitoring the outcome of the first election since the Hamas-led invasion and massacre on October 7, 2023.

Across the Gulf and among Israel’s immediate neighbors, Arab capitals are assessing whether the 26th Knesset could usher in a new chapter in Israeli leadership and policy or keep in place those currently in power, and what either outcome will mean for Israel and the wider region.

But while many Arab states may find new Israeli leadership — less associated with the post-October 7 military campaigns — easier to work with, few expect any plausible successor government to fundamentally redirect Israel’s foreign policy, according to experts and current and former officials familiar with regional thinking.

Regional leaders expect the right-wing to center-left camps best positioned to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain hawkish on Iran, opposed to Palestinian statehood, and committed to the far more aggressive security posture Israel has adopted since October 7.

Where Arab capitals do see room for change is in policies seen as less central to that security doctrine — including Gaza’s rehabilitation, Jewish violence in the West Bank, Syria’s stability, Temple Mount activity, and greater sensitivity to regional concerns.

Even limited adjustments on these issues could significantly change how Israel is viewed in the Arab world, should the next government decide they are worth prioritizing.

“The consequences of these elections for the region extend to as many fronts as Israel is involved in,” an Arab diplomatic official told The Times of Israel.

New people = new policies?

There are reasons for Arab states to prefer a Netanyahu win. He was the leader with whom Bahrain, the UAE, and Morocco signed the Abraham Accords, and he led a decades-long campaign to make Iran and its nuclear program a central international issue.

Yet his standing among Arab allies has plunged in recent years as images of suffering Gazans are broadcast into homes across the Middle East, and his government empowers far-right ministers who advocate annexation, relocation of Palestinians, and Jewish prayer atop the Temple Mount.

Many Arab states, including those that have formal relations with Israel like Jordan, Egypt, and the Abraham Accords countries, would be happy to see a “change in branding” in Israel’s government, said Joshua Krasna, director of the Forum for Regional Cooperation at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center.

Though Arab media outlets are following the race in Israel with intense scrutiny, the campaigns themselves are mostly focusing on domestic issues such as the Haredi draft and accountability for October 7.

On security, there is broader consensus around preserving the proactive doctrine Israel developed during the war, which favors preempting threats, keeping Iranian-backed forces and other hostile actors away from its borders, and maintaining broad freedom of military action.

Recent polling has generally put former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party level with or just behind Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud, with former premier Naftali Bennett’s Together party trailing third. Neither camp is projected to have a clear majority without reaching across the aisle or allying with non-Zionist Arab-Israeli parties.

“No matter what the next government is, [Arab states expect] it’s not going to be an Oslo government,” Krasna said, referring to the 1990s peace process that aimed for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Instead, he said, many are hoping for a right-of-center government led by what they regard as “cooler heads.”

Mohammad Baharoon, director general of the Dubai Public Policy Research Center, expressed skepticism that the Gulf would see any significant shift from a post-Netanyahu government. While many in the region hope Israel will “turn a page” after the election, he argued that the political forces shaping Israeli policy extend well beyond Netanyahu himself.

The Israeli public has been shifting to the right since well before October 7, and any new government will need to appeal to a population increasingly hardline on security and Palestinian issues.

Shifts in Israeli policy, even short of a 180, would make important differences to [Arab states’] assessment of Israel’s role in the region.

“Netanyahu does not operate alone, not in a vacuum,” Baharoon said.

Room for change

Still, Israel’s neighbors see room for meaningful movement on issues they do not regard as central to its postwar security doctrine — where a different coalition could change course without fundamentally altering Israel’s security posture.

Gulf capitals are not expecting “wholesale changes” from the next government, but are looking for certain “policy openings” on issues important to them, including in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and on regional diplomacy, said Daniel Benaim, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Arabian Peninsula Affairs under US President Joe Biden.

“Shifts in Israeli policy, even short of a 180, would make important differences to their assessment of Israel’s role in the region,” said Benaim, who is now a Distinguished Diplomatic Fellow at the Middle East Institute.

The Arab diplomatic official, who requested anonymity, similarly argued that a different coalition could make some relatively easy but regionally significant policy changes that Netanyahu’s current coalition is either unwilling or politically unable to make. He pointed specifically to cracking down more forcefully on settler violence as a key example of a policy Arab governments believe could change without forcing Israel to abandon any core security principle.

The United Nations had already begun condemning what it called “record level” settler violence during Bennett’s premiership in 2021-2022.  The difference today, the official argued, is that Netanyahu’s coalition depends on far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, whose parties are closely aligned with the settlement movement and make a sustained crackdown too politically costly, despite the premier at times condemning the violence.

“Netanyahu is saying things just for the outside world. He does not have the political will because of the composition and the structure of his coalition,” the Arab official charged.

Gaza offers another possible opening, the official added, saying that engaging more seriously with the existing US-backed roadmap for Gaza’s rehabilitation would be viewed “very positively” in the region, particularly by Israel’s closer neighbors of Egypt and Jordan.

While neither Eisenkot nor Bennett have drifted far from Netanyahu’s own stance on preventing reconstruction in Gaza until Hamas is disarmed, a coalition that distances itself from the idea of resettling the Strip or relocating Gazans — both championed by Ben Gvir and Smotrich — could be much more workable, the Arab official said. The same goes for another key policy of Arab concern, the status quo on the Temple Mount, they said.

Iran paradox

If the West Bank and Gaza offer room for adjustment, Iran, a mutual adversary for many Gulf states, is where continuity is likely to persist.

For more than a decade, Netanyahu has made the threat posed by the Islamic Republic the centerpiece of Israel’s regional and international security agenda. He openly clashed with the Obama administration over the 2015 nuclear deal and led the two recent military campaigns that severely degraded Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile, and military capabilities.

While Gulf states share Israel’s opposition to Iran, they were not on board with the Israeli-US decision to start a war that resulted in extensive Iranian attacks, destabilizing their security and disrupting their economies, particularly when they were unconvinced that the campaign could produce regime change or decisively eliminate the Iranian threat.

At the same time, they are not hoping for a more dovish Israeli government that Tehran could exploit.

“There’s both an understanding that Israel is a valuable military counterweight to Iran and a deep concern that’s grown over these years that Israel’s national security doctrine post-October 7th is not one that takes adequate account of the Gulf’s interests,” said Benaim.

Syria is another area where Gulf and Israeli interests could potentially be reconciled. Gulf states back the country’s new government of former jihadist rebels and increasingly see Syria’s stabilization and reconstruction as a strategic and economic priority.

With Israel likely to remain focused on preventing hostile forces from establishing themselves near its borders, a full withdrawal from its security zone in Syria is unlikely in the near future, but a government willing to make progress on a security deal with Damascus could go a long way.

In Lebanon, too, both Israel and its Arab partners want to see Hezbollah disarmed and the current government assume more control over the country. The IDF isn’t about to withdraw from its buffer zone in southern Lebanon either — but an approach with more quiet coordination with regional countries would build trust.

Beyond Netanyahu

Even if much of the Arab world doesn’t expect Israel’s broad strategic outlook to change, some of Israel’s regional partners feel they have reached their limits with the current government, leaving any hope for renewed political momentum dependent on a change in leadership.

Jordan’s King Abdullah, who has long criticized Netanyahu publicly, seems to be such an example, demonstrated by his willingness to outright condemn the Israeli leadership at the United Nations General Assembly last month.

“The Jordanians…feel that they’ve gone as far as they can with Netanyahu, with his government,” Krasna said.

Saudi Arabia, however, shows the limits of what a change in leadership alone can achieve. Riyadh may find a different Israeli government easier to engage with publicly, but normalization has “largely drifted out of reach in the near term,” according to Benaim.

Since October 7, Saudi Arabia has increasingly stressed the need for a credible pathway toward Palestinian statehood — something no leading Israeli bloc currently appears prepared to offer.

Arab capitals are not simply waiting for a different face.

“At the end of the day, the Gulf states, all of them, are not as concerned with the personalities involved as they are with the policies that the personalities make possible,” said Benaim, adding that “the real question that they’ll be looking for in Gulf capitals is whether a new government presents policy openings” on files that the current one has not shown progress on.

Baharoon stressed that the UAE will “respect the choice of the people” and engage with whoever the next leader is, but that it hopes for a more “future-focused” and “workable” partner.

Such a leader could well lead to the high-level, highly public engagement between Arab leaders and Israel that took place during the Bennett-Lapid years, during which top Israeli and Egyptian officials held five public meetings in their 18 months in office.

“Maybe the next coalition will be ready to implement policies that are a little bit better when it comes to dealing with the use of force, international and regional aspects,” said the Arab diplomat.