Israeli election fractures: How neoliberal governance and occupation erode coalition loyalty beyond Netanyahu’s base
Original framing: “In Netanyahu stronghold, signs of fraying loyalty emerge before election - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
Mizrahi Jewish communities, who make up 50% of Israel’s population but hold only 10% of political power, have historically been sidelined by Ashkenazi elites—a dynamic now exacerbated by Netanyahu’s coalition with far-right parties. Palestinian citizens of Israel, who face systemic discrimination in housing, education, and policing, have long been ignored in mainstream narratives of ‘Israeli democracy.’ The voices of secular working-class Israelis, who protested in 2011 and 2020, are again being erased in favor of a binary ‘Netanyahu vs. chaos’ framing.
Israel’s current political fractures are not a failure of loyalty but a symptom of a governance model that has prioritized occupation and elite extraction over domestic welfare for decades.
The historical parallels—from 1977’s neoliberal pivot to 2011’s social justice protests—reveal a pattern where economic precarity and colonial expansion create a fragmented electorate, one that transcends traditional ideological divides. The mainstream framing obscures the role of marginalized voices (Mizrahi Jews, Palestinian citizens) and the systemic drivers (austerity, militarization, corruption) that have eroded trust in institutions. Solutions require addressing the occupation’s economic drain, redistributing land and wealth, and adopting participatory governance models—steps that would unite disparate groups under a shared agenda of justice. The trickster here is the myth of ‘Israeli democracy’ itself, a narrative that survives only by ignoring its own contradictions until the cracks force a reckoning.