Are the upcoming Israeli elections merely a competition between Netanyahu and his opponents for the premiership?

It seems we are heading for an election battle, different from all previous elections, as there are deep internal crises afflicting the occupation state, a loss of public trust in the government, cracks in the Likud and a rebellion against Netanyahu's leadership, as well as threats of not accepting the election results from Netanyahu and his alliance. These elections may be accompanied by fabricated clashes and confrontations, especially in Arab areas, to disrupt the elections or use them as a pretext to outlaw Arab parties and prevent them from participating in the elections. The upcoming Israeli elections are not merely a competition between Benjamin Netanyahu and his opponents for the premiership, nor are they a traditional transfer of power between right-wing and centrist parties. Rather, for the first time since the establishment of the occupation "state," they appear to be a referendum on the results of a war whose repercussions have not yet ended, on the limits of Israeli power, and on the future of the relationship with the United States as the partner without whom "Israel" cannot fight a major regional war. Netanyahu senses danger to his leadership and the significant potential that might overthrow his leadership and remove him not only from the political scene but also lead him to prison, not just for the criminal charges pending against him before the Israeli judiciary. Instead, he will be held accountable after the formation of an official investigation committee for the security and intelligence failure on October 7, 2023, and the major mistakes in the continuous wars on more than one front, which the opposition, political and media elites, and former military and security leaders believe Netanyahu fought to serve his political and personal interests, leading Israel to disaster. Netanyahu rushes to Washington to meet his war partner, Trump, to seek a lifeline. The visit is not to deepen the traditional alliance between the two parties but to establish the rules for the next phase. Netanyahu will try during this visit to drag Trump back into war against Iran, considering that the war did not achieve its major goals, and the American-Iranian memorandum of understanding did not take Israeli security and political interests into account. Netanyahu realizes that Trump wants to solidify the agreement with Iran, serving American economic and strategic priorities and enhancing his political standing and chances of winning for him and his party in the upcoming November congressional midterm elections. Netanyahu is also looking to enhance his chances of winning and returning as prime minister in the upcoming October Israeli general legislative elections. Therefore, he will pressure Trump, if he fails to drag him into war with Iran again, to amend the American-Iranian memorandum of understanding to respond to Israeli security, military, and political interests in Lebanon, regarding the Strait of Hormuz issue, the Iranian nuclear program and highly enriched uranium, the Iranian missile program, Iran's regional role, and its relations with its allies from Arab and Palestinian liberation movements. This will enable him to market himself as the leader capable of bringing security to Israel and achieving victory over enemies. Opinion polls reveal that Netanyahu no longer monopolizes the leadership of the scene, and the rapid rise of former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot has reshuffled the cards within the opposition camp, leading in a number of polls over Naftali Bennett, while the Likud is retreating from its traditional position without collapsing. But the most important thing is that the same polls do not give either camp a stable majority, making the most likely scenario the re-production of the same division that Israel has suffered from in recent years, with a Knesset divided between intersecting blocs and a renewed inability to produce a strong government capable of making major strategic decisions. Reading the election discourse is more important than reading the numbers. Netanyahu is fighting his battle on the premise that he is the indispensable war leader, and that replacing him means admitting failure and abandoning the war's goals. As for the opposition, led by Eisenkot and Bennett, it does not present itself as a leadership for a new war, but as a leadership that rebuilds the state exhausted by war, but on the basis of extremist, racist, and war rhetoric. Therefore, its programs feature headlines that would not have topped any Israeli election campaign years ago: an official investigation committee into the failures of October 7, reorganization of the army, addressing the conscription crisis, expanding reserve forces, reforming the military establishment, and restoring public trust in the state. These are the priorities of a government preparing to restore the ability to wage war, not a government that learns from the lessons of war to make policy from outside it, nor a government that declares it is going to war. The opposition attacks Netanyahu because he did not achieve victory, but it does not promise Israelis to achieve this victory tomorrow. Instead, it first promises to rebuild the tools that make the next war possible. This is an implicit admission that the last war did not exhaust the army alone, but exhausted the state, society, and trust in leadership. In contrast, the opposition is confused regarding the United States, which has become a protector and supporter of Israel in any war. On the one hand, the opposition's discourse attacks Netanyahu because, according to the opposition, he has become a captive of American will and has accepted Washington's restrictions on the war, no longer able to impose his priorities. On the other hand, none of the opposition leaders call for disengagement from Washington or for fighting wars without it. Instead, they make restoring the relationship with it under new assumed conditions one of their most important goals. The question that the opposition avoids is more important than its slogans: If the problem is Netanyahu, would the United States have chosen war if the prime minister were someone else? And if Washington has redefined its interests and now believes that expanding regional wars no longer serves its economic and political priorities, do Eisenkot or Bennett have the ability to change the American decision, or is the most either of them can do to improve the management of the relationship with Washington, which will remain the final arbiter in the decision of war and how to exit it? The battle is no longer between proponents of war and proponents of peace, but between those who believe that Israel needs a comprehensive review before any new war, and those who try to convince the voter that the problem lies in Netanyahu's person, not in the transformations that have affected Israel's surrounding strategic environment. Perhaps the most important thing revealed by the election campaign is that Israel itself no longer speaks with confidence about its ability to wage a long regional war alone. The talk about rebuilding the army, expanding mobilization, reforming command systems, and reorganizing the relationship with the United States is not the discourse of someone preparing for an imminent military decision, but the discourse of an entity recalculating after discovering that the power it possessed is no longer sufficient to achieve the goals it set for itself. Most likely, according to the polls, the elections will not produce a governing majority but will reproduce the crisis of the political system itself. Then Israel will face an unprecedented paradox: a new leadership that may emerge from the ruins of Netanyahu but lacks a governing majority, or Netanyahu remains without a majority that enables him to continue his project. In both cases, the crisis is not a crisis of individuals, but a crisis of a "state" searching for a new strategy after the limits of power clashed with the limits of politics, and the limits of Israeli will clashed with the limits of American will. The most important outcome of the elections may not be knowing who sits in the prime minister's office, but discovering that Israel, for the first time in decades, is entering a phase where the American question is part of the Israeli question. Whoever governs in Tel Aviv will not be able to ignore the fact that the decision of war is no longer purely an Israeli decision, and that rebuilding the army may not be easier than rebuilding the ability to influence the American decision, or to do without it, because rebuilding the army is also no longer possible without America.