Israel's general election on 27 October is being described by a visiting columnist as the most consequential in the country's history, with voters warning that it could also be its last if the current rightwing coalition is returned to power.
Writing after a week on the ground, Jonathan Freedland said the stakes of next month's contest extend well beyond Israel's own citizens, and that the visit served as a reminder of what is at stake for Israelis and Palestinians alike, as well as for those watching from abroad.
More than one voter told him they feared that a renewed mandate for the coalition headed by Benjamin Netanyahu would mean 27 October is not merely Israel's most important election but its final one. Those voters were not speaking about the absence of democracy in the occupied West Bank, Freedland noted, but about Israel within its internationally recognised, pre-1967 borders.
Within those borders, he wrote, the past four years have seen a sustained assault on the machinery of liberal democracy by the most rightwing government since the state's establishment in 1948. The effort, he argued, has been committed and focused, aimed at removing the checks and restraints on the government's own power and installing what he described as a kind of elective dictatorship.
The column, published in the Guardian, frames the coming vote as a test not only for Israeli institutions but for the country's international standing and for the wider region. Freedland's account places the erosion of democratic safeguards at the centre of the campaign, arguing that the machinery of accountability — courts, oversight and the restraints on executive power — has been the target of a deliberate programme rather than a series of isolated disputes.
He also pointed to the occupied West Bank as a separate and long-standing concern, distinguishing it from the democratic backsliding he says is under way inside Israel proper. That distinction matters, he suggested, because the debate over the future of Israeli democracy is often conducted with reference to the territories, while the changes he describes are taking place within the state's recognised borders.
For observers outside Israel, the columnist argued that the election carries consequences that cannot be treated as a purely domestic matter. The outcome, he wrote, will shape how the country is governed, how its institutions function and how it relates to its neighbours and to its allies.
The warning from voters that the ballot could be the last is presented not as a prediction but as a fear voiced on the doorstep, reflecting how sharply the political mood has shifted among those who spoke to him. Their concern is that a further term for the current coalition would entrench changes that are difficult to reverse, leaving fewer avenues for voters to hold the government to account.
With polling day set for 27 October, the campaign is now entering its final weeks. Freedland's account suggests the result will be read far beyond Israel's borders, as a signal of whether the country's democratic restraints survive the next government — or whether, as the voters he met fear, the coming election is the last one that will matter.
