Political uncertainty.

Israel faces one of its most consequential elections, but this fractious country’s vote ends with no clear path to a ruling government.

Tonight, Israel’s uncertain future on "Compass Points."

♪ Announcer: Support for "Compass Points" has been provided by... the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Camilla and George Smith, the Dorney Koppel Foundation, the Gruber Family Foundation, and Cap and Margaret Anne Eschenroeder.

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Upholding freedom by strengthening democracies at home and abroad.

Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

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Thank you.

Once again, moderator Nick Schifrin.

Hello and welcome to a special edition of "Compass Points" from Israel.

It has been a momentous election here with the highest turnout in decades.

But the path forward for the country and for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is uncertain.

So we turn to one of Netanyahu’s biographers and one of the sharpest political analysts in the country, Anshel Pfeffer of "The Economist."

Anshel Pfeffer, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

- Hi, Nick.

- This was the largest turnout of any Israeli election in the last 25 years.

We traveled across the country and multiple voters said that this was Israel’s most consequential election in years.

Do you think Israel is at a crossroads right now?

I think Israel’s gone way past the crossroads for a while now.

And if there was a crossroad, it was probably the previous election in 22, when the then so-called government of change only lasted for a year and a bit.

And then Netanyahu returned to office with the most radical coalition of far-right and ultra-religious parties that Israel has ever had.

So if there was a crossroad, that was when Israel took a hard right.

And this election has been about whether Israel is going to continue in that direction or perhaps begin to slow down, maybe slightly change direction.

The questions about Israel that that far-right government has sparked or has led to are questions that we’ve asked about Israel for a while.

What kind of democracy is this country?

How religious, how secular is it?

But today, are the divides in the country deeper than in the past?

I think that they’re getting deeper and deeper because everyone feels that so much of what is their Israel, what for them are the most important values of being Israeli, are in jeopardy.

And it’s coming from all sides.

On the far-right and part of the religious communities, there’s a feeling that the legal establishment and what are perceived as the elites, though obviously they haven’t been elites for many years, are somehow destroying the soul of the nation.

And then on this, what perhaps may have been once the elites, the secular liberal Israelis are feeling that they’ve lost their country for a long time now and that they’re basically holding on to shrinking enclaves.

And that feeling that there’s a zero-sum equation here of what it means to be Israeli and who defines that.

And it’s always someone else defining it for you as well.

I think that has become, for many Israelis, increasingly existential.

And when that existential feeling takes place during an election, I talk to lots of people, you talk to lots of people who feel like their guy or their team, more to the point, is on one side or the other of that future through that divide.

Is that really the most accurate way to think of it?

That it’s either one way or the other?

I mean, it seems like Israel’s path is a little bit more ambiguous than that.

Well, from a legal perspective, that’s not the way it is.

I mean, this is a parliamentary system.

So you vote for a party, you don’t vote for a person.

And since it’s a proportional representation system, then no one party has an outright majority and the governments or the coalitions are supposed to be creatures of compromise.

That’s the way the Israeli system is supposed to work.

- Supposed to work, right.

But for a number of election cycles now, it’s always hard to remember when, the last time it was like that, the election has been a referendum over one person, over yes or no Netanyahu.

And it’s not necessarily been do you like Netanyahu, do you want him to remain, but do you identify with the group that is the groups that are voting for Netanyahu, the tribes, or do you identify with the tribes that really want to see Netanyahu leave?

And it’s as if Netanyahu has become the coder for Israeli identity.

If you’re for him or against him, you can tell what Israeli tribe you belong to.

You wrote recently that "even if Netanyahu "were to have ended up in the opposition, "he would dominate the agenda."

Why is he so dominant in and out of power?

Well, first of all, we saw that in previous periods when he was in opposition.

And Netanyahu is a showman.

And from the very beginning of his public career, even before he was a politician, when he was a diplomat in the 1980s in Washington and then in New York, he always made it about himself.

You’ve covered diplomacy.

You know that most diplomats kind of stay in the sidelines.

That’s where they feel that they can be most effective, comfortable and effective.

Netanyahu, from the moment he was appointed, he wasn’t a professional diplomat.

He was appointed sort of because the new ambassador of Israel to Washington knew his dad and thought he’d be good.

The moment he was appointed as a deputy ambassador in Washington, his job, the way he saw it, was to be on television, to be in the media, to be making Israel’s case.

Now, there’s an argument that that was the right thing to do.

But from the very first moment, it became about himself.

It became about his stardom, which began there in Washington and then in New York at the UN.

So, Netanyahu has now been in public life for 45 years.

And all that time, it’s always been about him, the way he did diplomacy and the way he does politics, the way he does statesmanship.

It’s about the spectacle.

It’s about the speech.

It’s about how you appear in the media.

And for Netanyahu, these are not just means to an end.

Schifrin: That is his identity.

- That is what he is.

And he believes, because he’s so good at it, he believes that this is what’s so important.

That’s what makes him a good politician.

And that’s redefined the meaning of a politician in Israel.

All the politicians in Israel, nearly all the politicians, we can talk about those who don’t, are basically wannabes.

They want to show that they can also make impressive speeches in English.

They want to show they can be interviewed on CNN or Fox News and give a good fight if the interviewer is hostile to Israel.

In perfect English, as Netanyahu has repeatedly pointed out.

As perfect as possible.

And that’s sort of become the yardstick.

Now, that’s obviously not what a statesman or a leader of a country... That’s not the first requisite of the job, but that’s how Netanyahu has formed Israeli leadership around his own image.

Schifrin: And not only has he done that when it comes to within Israel, his argument, especially since Donald Trump became president, is "only I "can have a relationship with Donald Trump."

"Only I can," for example, "bomb Iran with the United States."

We saw President Trump endorse Bibi.

Is there any indication that that helped?

How important has that relationship been to Bibi domestically?

I think most Israelis are surprised that Netanyahu, even though he lost his majority, wasn’t much more severely punished by the Israeli public.

Is that because of the Trump endorsement?

I think there’s probably a thousand different things here.

Once again, Netanyahu has been around for so long, any decision regarding whether you’re voting or don’t vote for him is not motivated by one factor.

It’s an accumulation of so many different things.

And every Israeli, even if he’s never met Netanyahu, has a huge part of Netanyahu in him because we’ve all seen... Obviously, as journalists, we’ve seen many thousands of hours of Netanyahu.

But every Israeli is just used to opening the television and seeing him there or seeing him on a device.

You can’t escape him if you live here, even for a short while.

To the point you were just making, Bibi was prime minister during Israel’s most deadly day, the October 7 terrorist attacks, which was also, of course, Israel’s worst ever intelligence failure.

Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the opposition, argued he, Eisenkot, could finish the wars that Bibi couldn’t.

How did Bibi counter those narratives?

What are you looking at?

So Netanyahu is saying, since October 7, "We’ve killed everyone who’s threatened us.

"We’ve devastated Gaza.

"We’ve smashed Hezbollah.

"We’ve attacked Iran."

It depends how you count it.

But these two major wars or campaigns in Iran, look at that.

Well, Gadi Eisenkot is saying, "No, look at October 7.

"Look what preceded October 7."

Not just Gadi Eisenkot, all of Netanyahu’s opponents and critics, don’t look from October 8.

Always look whatever led to October 7.

And don’t accept the fact that it’s a work in progress now and we’re doing well.

No, Hamas are back in Gaza.

Israel spent 3 years of a devastating war, really ruining its international standing.

70-plus thousand Palestinians were killed in that war.

Israeli soldiers were killed.

Israel’s resources and its entire conscience has been taken up by this war period.

Now, Gadi Eisenkot is not saying that war was not justified.

He was in that war cabinet.

His son was killed.

And his son was killed, and two nephews.

He’s not saying that that war was not justified.

It did not have to happen.

He was one of the architects, the original architects of the war.

He’s saying that war hasn’t achieved its objectives.

And he’s saying that it’s sapped Israel’s resources.

And, obviously, there’s the wider question of why is Israel fighting such long wars?

It’s against Israel’s national security doctrine.

Well, let me get to that in a second.

Let’s go from Gaza to Lebanon.

We talked about it a little bit.

Let’s talk about Iran.

In his election night speech, Netanyahu warned this.

"It is in our power, "together with our wonderful friend, President Trump, "to remove this threat once and for all."

Is there any doubt here that Netanyahu wants to restart the war?

I think for Netanyahu, he said the war never ended.

It’s just a hiatus, or he just pressed pause.

But there’s this idea that there’s a war which can reach an incredible result, the final toppling of the Iranian regime.

And that’s, as far as Netanyahu’s concerned, until he reaches that point, he’s not.

He hasn’t fulfilled his mission.

And everything that’s happening in Iran, in the region, is bent towards that.

And serves as a justification for that goal.

Exactly.

This has been his priority for decades.

But things have changed, because once upon a time, it was what he talked about.

And you can ask forward Israeli generals and defense officials, and they’ll say Netanyahu talked about it.

He didn’t always do that much about it.

What we’ve seen over the last 3 years, particularly since Donald Trump arrived in the White House for a second term, is it went up several levels of actually being something that Netanyahu believes that can be carried out.

And you asked before about October 7th.

This is part of that same war.

Gaza, Hamas, it’s a small place.

It’s tunnels and stuff.

How can you compare it to a war by hundreds of fighter jets flying a thousand miles?

For Netanyahu, it’s one continuum.

And the war that began on October 7th has to end in terror.

There are people around Donald Trump who believe that they should restart the war.

A 3-day plan, according to one official I talked to.

There’s certainly people in the military who do want to see the U.S.

go back to war.

Take us through what happens in terms of the coalition building that we’ll see over the next few weeks if Israel and the United States start, or restart, the kinetic aspects of this war.

Well, the coalition is already there.

The coalition has been built for years now, ever since basically Israel, within America’s military framework, moved it.

The central command, part of the U.S.

military.

And became part of the American military security architecture.

- The regional, yeah.

Pfeffer: In the region, working also together with a lot of Arab armies as well.

So that’s sort of the basic building block.

And you’ve seen increasing integration, both of defensive capabilities.

And that was the main original thing.

The different missile defense systems in Israel obviously has a lot of those.

In fact, before the Iran war, that’s what Israel and all of the Arab countries were quite proud of.

The idea that they could have regional air defense.

And in some ways it worked.

I think it was found lacking in the last Iran war.

But what’s changed, and we saw that in the two attacks that Iran launched.

Sorry, launched against Israel in 24, when Biden was still president.

That really worked well for Israel because the Americans were there and various Arab countries were there.

Britain and France sent aircraft.

And together with Israel’s capabilities, they intercepted over 300 missiles each time.

So that’s how it was supposed to work.

And it did work.

When Trump came along, then the offensive capacity suddenly became something.

And I think when Israel launched its first war in June 25, I don’t think Trump was 100% certain that he would join in.

The option was there.

Yeah, frankly, some Israeli officials weren’t certain.

And just by giving the green light, in a way, Trump was already involved.

The first American president to do that.

But then from a tactical level, Israel seems to be doing a great job.

None of its planes were shot down.

Hundreds of Iranian targets are being hit.

So Trump decides, "I can get in on this."

Sends the B-2s, Operation Night Hammer.

And for the first time, Israel and America allied and so many things together.

Many operations in secret.

For the first time, an American-Israeli offensive operation happening at the same time against a joint enemy.

That was a massive change and an upgrade in many ways to the relationship.

Obviously, the U.S.-Israel relationship is going through a lot of interesting turns and twists.

- Yeah, yeah.

But that was an upgrade.

Then came the next upgrade, the second war at the end of February of this year.

And this is a war which was planned from the start together.

The idea that war would be launched was actually almost by accident because Trump said his help is on hand.

At the beginning, actually, he was kind of worried that this would happen before Israel was ready and the Iranians would retaliate.

But then he managed to get Trump to wait for a few weeks.

And they put in place what is probably one of the most impressive joint operations of any two armies.

Certainly, the tech levels and intelligence sharing levels.

And the Israeli Air Force likes to talk about it as a flying wingtip to wingtip with the Americans.

Although they’re not actually wingtip to wingtip, but that’s the idea.

- But you know what?

If you went to Ben Gurion Airport at that time, you’d have seen 70 or 80 American KC-135s and 416s on the apron there.

And it was a huge and incredible level of cooperation.

That’s still there.

That’s still there, exactly.

But let me get us to, again, this week’s message from Eisenkot, which was very different than Netanyahu’s.

Eisenkot warned, "I call on the heads of the security establishment "and civil service.

Stand firm "in the face of any attempt to challenge you.

"Netanyahu, do not dare use Israel’s security "for your political needs."

That’s a critique Eisenkot has made before.

But how critical is it right now?

It’s critical right now because we know, and this is being briefed intensively by various sources in the IDF, that Netanyahu is pushing for another round of strikes on Iran.

And at least part of the professional Israeli military leadership and part of the intelligence community thinks that this is not the best timing.

They’re not against the war with Iran.

But the pushback is not like the previous two wars.

The previous two wars, the military and the intelligence community were very much with Netanyahu on that.

And now for the first time, there’s a pushback.

Let’s go back to what you were talking about, endless wars and the isolation.

So Netanyahu has talked about Israel being a super Sparta, self-sufficient in war, relying less on allies.

He even recently talked about Israel might have to use crypto in the face of sanctions.

Does Bibi, does Israel understand that despite the relationship with President Trump, it is isolated internationally?

Well, you said, does Israel understand?

Who in Israel?

Is Israel just Netanyahu?

Are there other people?

Certainly, if you talk to, once again, the professional diplomats and people whose job it is to maintain and to enhance Israel’s national security, they’re hugely worried about that, massive concern, both when it comes to America, when it comes to European allies.

I don’t remember ever, and I speak to Israeli diplomats, I don’t ever remember this level of concern.

Now, I can’t tell you if Netanyahu’s concerned because A, he doesn’t talk to me.

But also, he doesn’t show that type of concern.

He just says, and his aides told me this week, "Look, we’re not isolated.

We’ve got Donald Trump.

"We might launch war on Iran.

"We’re not isolated.

What are you talking about?"

And there’s a point there because the level of intimacy between an Israeli-American president and, as a result, the level of intimacy between the armed forces and federal communities is unprecedented in all the years of Israeli-American history.

Now, if you look at the public opinion in the United States, if you look at the political trends and who may be in the White House in the future, certainly who will be in the Senate and the House after the midterms, there’s a very different picture.

And that’s what Eisenhower and his campaign surrogates, part of the list of parliamentary candidates, were arguing throughout the last few weeks, the last few months.

We will talk to everyone in the United States.

We will bring back.

Israel’s reputation internationally as a secular democracy.

That’s the argument that they were making.

But it’s not clear that, one, that won the day in the Israeli election, or two, Netanyahu even thinks that it’s relevant.

The trick of what Netanyahu does is he makes it, as I said before, everything is about himself.

And in Donald Trump, he has the perfect partner.

There’s another politician who sees the whole world revolving around him.

And it’s very easy to present this relationship.

I can tell you that there’s an incredible relationship between various figures and officials in Israel and America.

But you’ll never hear about it because it’s things happening beneath the radar.

And you don’t need to know about it.

When it’s personified by two men, everything with them is about the spectacle.

And even when Trump is pissed off at Netanyahu, we’ve seen that.

- We’ve definitely seen that.

We’ve seen that more than once, and using that kind of language.

There still is an affinity there.

Trump doesn’t have any other world leader.

Also, you know, Trump is someone who puts store by his old relationships.

When Trump became president the first time in 2016, he already knew Netanyahu from those days in New York.

They haven’t been very close, but they were friendly.

And the fact that there was one leader who also he felt an affinity with, who he knew already, gave Netanyahu a huge advantage.

Yeah, absolutely.

And finally, this idea of endless wars.

Israel’s national security doctrine used to be about short, decisive wars.

But we’ve seen a lot of talk, including a report from the head of the country’s most prominent think tank recently, that the country’s concept of how to ensure its security now includes the idea that pursuing peace is a danger and war is necessary.

Preventative war is preferable.

Is Israel set at this point to be in a perpetual state of war?

Israel’s a small country.

Its economy is doing very well, even at wartime.

But its resources are not the kind of resources that you can keep in the ground and take out when you need them and sell them.

It’s a knowledge-based economy.

It’s based on people.

And at the end of the day, fatigue sets in.

And the number of people who are willing to fight this war, and we’re talking about an army which is based to a very large degree on its reserves.

And it’s a small part of Israeli society.

It’s very appreciated.

There’s a lot of hype around the reservists.

But ultimately, the burden falls on a shrinking number of people.

And we did have an increasing number of reservists, say, after 500 days of being deployed after October 7th, "I can’t do it anymore."

Yeah, and that’s the situation.

And Netanyahu and his government are not interested in resolving these wars.

And this is the whole point of Israel’s national security.

When David Ben-Gurion founded the country and set out those pillars of Israel’s national security, including a reservist army, and basically said we need to know when to end wars, even if we haven’t achieved everything we’d like to achieve, because we need periods.

Because we’re gonna fight wars.

We’re in a tough neighborhood.

But we need, as a small country without natural resources, to have periods between the wars in which we can build a society, build our economy, give people a rest.

And those periods need to be as long as possible.

The wars will come, but the national security doctrine is to try and delay them.

And does that mean that another idea from Israel’s history, that when we are strong, we can find peace, is that just no longer?

The word peace has gone out a long time ago in Israel.

It has, for many Israelis, a naïve weakness, naïveté, risk-taking.

And it’s not entirely wrong.

Israel has succeeded with some of its peace agreements in Egypt and Jordan.

Israel’s two longest and most important sides, the biggest armies on Israel’s borders.

There’s now peace there.

Not a very warm peace, but it’s holding, and it’s helped Israel’s society and economy immeasurably.

But the biggest issue at the end of the day is peace with the Palestinians, and that’s not a border.

And that’s not even on the table right now.

But the idea of even trying to reach peace with the Palestinians, certainly since October 7th, is alien to many Israelis.

And certainly Netanyahu, who has always tried to sideline the Palestinian issue and say, "No, the big story is Iran.

"The Palestinians is just a rabbit hole.

"You don’t need to waste your time on that."

That blew up on October 7th.

Netanyahu had to take the fight to Iran to prove that his strategy on October 7th wasn’t a mistake.

Anshel Pfeffer, thank you very much.

And that’s it from us from Israel.

Thank you for watching.

We’ll see you here again next week on "Compass Points."

Announcer: Support for "Compass Points" has been provided by... the Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, Camilla and George Smith, the Dorney Koppel Foundation, the Gruber Family Foundation, and Cap and Margaret Anne Eschenroeder.

The Judy and Peter Blum Kovler Foundation.

Upholding freedom by strengthening democracies at home and abroad.

Additional support is provided by Friends of the News Hour.

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