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As Israel's election date is set for October 27, most parties have turned to campaign messaging, but the Likud has instead launched an eleventh-hour legislative push to advance its priorities before the Knesset recess.
In the latest episode of the Jerusalem Post's Deep Dive podcast, host Jacob Laznik and the paper's breaking-news desk manager, Shir Perets, examined why Netanyahu views this legislative effort as central to forming his next coalition and how the leverage of his haredi partners continues to shape government spending.
They set the political maneuvering against a striking regional backdrop, in which a US-Middle East alignment exchanges strikes with Iran while Israel remains, for now, on the sidelines.
The discussion centers on two contentious measures enacted this week, the Basic Law on Torah study and the temporary freeze on arresting draft evaders, and their implications for an already strained military manpower crisis that the IDF chief of staff had publicly cautioned against.
Laznik and Perets also weighed the campaign's most notable development: the rise of former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, whose momentum now appears to eclipse both Netanyahu and the Bennett–Lapid ticket.
What distinguishes this episode is the candor of two commentators tracking these events as they unfold, following the fiscal incentives, testing competing arguments, and returning to the question that will define the vote: after four years, is the country better off?