Will Israel's October election derail the Gaza ceasefire plan?

Gaza Strip - Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has little political room to agree to a Gaza withdrawal before Israelis vote in national elections in October, with the political cost of appearing to hand Hamas a victory simply too high, putting any progress on the ceasefire deal at risk.

The peace plan, agreed in October 2025, has been stuck at a months-long standstill. As part of Phase Two, Israeli forces are meant to withdraw from Gaza in exchange for Hamas disarming. But so far, neither side will make the first move.

To break the impasse, a US-led roadmap unveiled on 30 July called for Israel to halt its operations in stages as Hamas stores its weapons and hands off governance to a new Palestinian body, a condition Hamas agreed to on the condition that Israel immediately halt strikes.

But so far, Israel refuses to withdraw from the so-called Yellow Line - which divides Gaza between Israeli and Palestinian-controlled territory - instead pushing steadily deeper into the Palestinian territory. 

Into this messy fray comes Israel’s national elections, set for 27 October. The elections, the first since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, have turned the withdrawal into a hot-button political issue. That has dimmed prospects for a speedy pullout.

“It is unlikely Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will carry out any withdrawal - even a partial one - or allow a technocratic committee into Gaza before the vote,” Palestinian political researcher Imad Abu Rahma told The New Arab.

“Such steps could weaken his standing and that of his right-wing coalition.”

Political analyst Reham Owda went further, saying Netanyahu has no room to agree to a withdrawal before the vote at all.

“Accepting a formula that would confine and store Hamas's weapons rather than destroy them, alongside an early Israeli withdrawal, could be read inside Israel as abandoning one of the war's core goals: fully disarming the Strip and ending any political or military role for Hamas,” she told The New Arab.

Election maths rule out Israeli withdrawal

The October elections are widely considered the toughest challenge to Netanyahu’s long political career to date, with his right-wing Likud party and its ultra-Orthodox coalition deeply unpopular amid war fatigue and his own long-running corruption trials.

Recently, the polls have not been in Netanyahu’s favour. His top rival, Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief with the centrist Yashar party, led a late-July poll on the question of who is better suited to be prime minister - 46 percent to 40 percent. And Likud recently hit its lowest polling numbers since June 2025.

Former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid are also running together on a joint centrist ticket called Together.

Any push to withdraw from Gaza would likely alienate Netanyahu from right-wing voters, handing his rivals a chance to portray it as a capitulation to Hamas, said Owda.

“The decision to accept any deal doesn't rest with Netanyahu alone but is also constrained by the balance of power on the Israeli right,” Owda said.

And given Netanyahu’s declining poll numbers, Netanyahu is likely to prioritise his right-wing base over a withdrawal deal ahead of the vote, said Mohammed Diab, an Israeli affairs expert.

Israel's electoral contest is, at its core, a race between parties that belong to the right-wing camp and their views on the war are largely the same, said Abu Rahma. Regardless of which takes power, they’d push for Israeli military control over Gaza until Hamas is fully dismantled.

When Netanyahu left room for a negotiated, phased withdrawal tied to Hamas's disarmament, rivals like Eisenkot called it premature, insisting that Israeli forces stay in place and Hamas be fully dismantled first. That has left Netanyahu little room to compromise without appearing weaker than his own challengers. 

“Israel's opposition holds tougher positions than some of his own coalition partners - narrowing his room to manoeuvre,” Diab said.

Netanyahu argues that Israel's ‘wins’ against Hezbollah, Iran, and Assad's fall prove the war's strategy worked, and that ending it on Hamas's terms would squander those gains, a case he has made directly against Eisenkot, who pushed to end the war earlier.

“The 30 July deal itself doesn’t offer much hope for moving forward,” Abu Rahma told The New Arab. “Its success still hinges on having an Israeli government willing to honour its commitments, chief among them withdrawal.”

As part of the 30 July deal, both sides have until 13 August to agree on a timeline for disarmament and withdrawal. Netanyahu’s office has signalled it opposes the plan outright. And Hamas says it won’t disarm until Israel moves first. So far there’s no fixed date for when an actual disarmament or withdrawal would even begin.

“The text of the agreement allows for more than one interpretation, making implementation prone to disputes,” said Abu Rahma “Whenever gaps emerge over how to read the deal's clauses, pressure tends to fall on the Palestinian side, which gets blamed for stalling implementation.”

One clause illustrates the problem: the roadmap states that moving from one phase to the next depends on “verified completion” of each side's commitments, with an international body empowered to “observe any violations,” but it never defines what completion, or a violation, actually looks like.

Netanyahu's waning influence in Washington

Benjamin Netanyahu's leverage in Washington isn't what it once was. 

A late-July poll found 49 percent of Americans believe he should be arrested under the International Criminal Court warrant, while nearly half say US support for Israel has gone too far.

That shift comes as the once-close Trump-Netanyahu relationship has grown visibly strained since the Iran war, with Trump publicly rebuking Netanyahu over Israeli operations in Lebanon and Vice President JD Vance warning Israeli leaders not to alienate what he called their only remaining major ally.

At the moment, Netanyahu can't reject the deal outright, for fear of a direct clash with the US administration, said Owda.

So far Netanyahu has avoided commenting publicly on the roadmap, but his office made its objections clear through spokesman Doron Spielman, who said that “the indispensable first step toward any lasting arrangement is the genuine, verifiable and irreversible demilitarisation of Hamas,” adding that “anything short of full demilitarisation will leave Hamas with the capability to threaten Israel again”. 

“Israel's government is trying to balance outside pressure with domestic considerations,” Owda told The New Arab.

“It avoids an outright rejection of the talks, while sending field and political signals that its hardline stance remains unchanged - continued military operations and strikes in Gaza, ongoing targeting of Hamas operatives, and leaks from sources close to Netanyahu's office about Israeli reservations over the deal's terms.”

The aim, she said, is to avoid embarrassing the US administration while reassuring the Israeli public that the government isn't caving to Hamas's demands.

Still, pressure from Washington is unlikely to force genuine concessions, said Diab. He points to last October’s ceasefire deal as proof. It was followed by thousands of Israeli violations and an ever-shifting Yellow Line that Israel has steadily nudged deeper into Gaza.

The US has done nothing to fully enforce the October plan’s first-phase commitment, which called for Hamas releasing the living hostages, Israel releasing about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange, an increase in humanitarian aid entering Gaza, and Israeli forces pulling back to the Yellow Line. 

Netanyahu plays for time

With months still left before the election, and the “Yellow Line” now covering nearly 65% of Gaza, analysts see Israel less focused on reaching a deal than on buying time to widen its footprint on the ground.

Diab said Netanyahu is moving with an eye on the ballot box more than on reaching a deal.

“Netanyahu may again try to drag out the talks by objecting to certain clauses and keeping mediators and the US administration in repeated negotiating rounds, buying time without genuine intent to show the flexibility needed for a deal,” he said.

“Hamas, for its part, has shown some flexibility by agreeing to discuss the weapons issue at all - calling even that a political concession,” he said. “But Netanyahu, who promised his base ‘absolute victory’ and Gaza's full disarmament, is also using the issue in his campaign messaging, which lowers the odds of a quick settlement.”

Owda said any future negotiation over withdrawal will likely remain tied to conditions on destroying Hamas's weapons and ending its political and military role, alongside handing administration of Gaza to an international body and a civilian management committee.

“This position enjoys relative convergence between Netanyahu and several of his main rivals, despite their political differences,” she said, “meaning the withdrawal question will likely stay bound to Israel's security conditions regardless of who wins”.

Abu Rahma said Netanyahu and his coalition view military escalation, in Gaza or the West Bank, as an electoral strategy capable of rallying votes in an Israeli society drifting further right.

“If the opposition wins,” he said, “it might take a more flexible approach to Trump's plan and the Gaza deal, and possibly toward the Palestinian Authority, particularly on clearance revenues - though that wouldn't necessarily mean abandoning annexation and settlement policies or a fundamental shift in Israel's position.”

Ansam Al-Kitaa is a freelance journalist based in Gaza. For years, she has covered the successive wars in Gaza and their humanitarian and social impacts for international and local outlets. Follow her work on Facebook: @ansam.elqatta

This article is published in collaboration with Egab

Edited by Charlie Hoyle