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Israel has entered an election year, and when Israelis next go to the polls to elect their representatives in the Knesset they must be aware that this will be one of the most, if not the most, crucial general elections in terms of deciding the future of their country, possibly since its inception.

Now that we can cautiously hope that the ghastly war in Gaza is gradually winding down, it is a time of reckoning. It is time for Israeli society to decide who can best represent them in the rebuilding of a country which, after 17 years during most of which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in power, is deeply polarized at home and has been left with very few friends and allies abroad.

Election law dictates that a general election must take place no later than Oct. 27 next year but the Knesset can set an earlier date. It is hard to contemplate the prospect that even such a brazen, cynical and autocracy-prone prime minister as Netanyahu, aided by his bunch of antidemocratic and war-mongering political allies, would attempt to postpone the election — or even cancel it.

A government asks voters to reelect it based on its record. An opposition stands on its potential to do better. But the next election in Israel will not be the normal bout of political wrangling between opponents over merely making a few adjustments to the course of the country.

Instead, it will be about steering this troubled nation in a whole new direction. It will be a battle for the very soul of Israel and its long-term survival. Voters will have to decide whether to once again leave their fate in the hands of a divisive leader and a government that polarized the country, assaulted its democratic character, failed to protect its people on what proved to be the single most deadly day in the nation’s history, and then responded to that day by saddling the country with charges of genocide, and its prime minister with an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.

Or do they instead want to begin what is sure to be a long, excruciating and arduous, but desperately needed, process of internal healing, and also a process of reconciliation with the rest of the world — first and foremost, their Palestinian neighbors.

The Trump administration seems determined to ensure that the war in Gaza is over. To this end, the US president continues to dispatch his “heavies” to Jerusalem to ensure Netanyahu complies with the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

The next election in Israel will not be the normal bout of political wrangling between opponents

Yossi Mekelberg

In quick succession, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have visited Israel, while the two chief US mediators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, are spending more time in Jerusalem than in Washington.

Now that all the living hostages are back home and the bodies of the deceased ones are slowly being returned so that their loved ones can say their last goodbyes, some sense of normality is gradually being restored.

This also means that most of the country’s army reservists will soon be demobilized. They will be returning to a very different society from the one they left and with which they have had only sporadic engagement over the past two years, having served in the military for up to 300 days in each of those years.

This will be the time for them to tell the stories of what they were sent to do by the most extreme and incompetent government in their country’s history, and what the implications of this are for themselves, for their families, and for the nation.

Over the past three years, many of the built-in contradictions in Israeli society, stemming from its aspiration to be both Jewish and democratic, came to a head as never before. It can be argued that an outright clash between these two ambitions was always inevitable, and this might well be the case. However, it does not mean that the two aspirations cannot be reconciled.

It is true that the present government is the worst imaginable combination of ultranationalism, religious fundamentalism and strong autocratic tendencies, in addition to being sectarian and corrupt. Moreover, except for an 18-month spell, Netanyahu has been prime minister for the past 17 years and has dragged the country down into a morass of divisive populism, strategic shortsightedness, normalized corruption, and readiness to compromise national interests for the benefit of his own political survival, while more recently doing his best to sabotage his corruption trial.

But the forthcoming general election must also be as much about what the opposition, with the support of civil society and individuals, can offer as a genuine alternative, not an attempt to compete with Netanyahu on his own rotten patch.

It goes without saying that the first step in the country’s healing process must be the formation of a genuinely independent inquiry into the disastrous failures of Oct. 7, 2023, not one appointed by the government. Such an inquiry must look at every aspect of the deadly fiasco of that day and the two years that followed. It should go deeper than examining the military or even the political failure, which will mean a discussion about the very essence of what Israel is and what it would like to be.

It must provide answers to those communities on the border with Gaza that found themselves left alone to fend off the Hamas assault; to the families of those who were celebrating life at the Nova music festival and were massacred; and to the young soldiers who had not been properly equipped to face such dangers. All of them feel betrayed by their government and the heads of the security forces.

The inquiry must address decades of failure to achieve a fair and just resolution to relations with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution, and the entrenchment of the occupation through the blockade of Gaza and the construction and expansion of settlements.

It must also be about the irrational obsession with preventing Palestinian self-determination, which led to the folly of funneling money to Israel’s archenemy in Gaza. It is also time to ask how the “world’s most moral army” became an army of revenge that set about killing tens of thousands of innocent people, and inflicting hunger and destitution on hundreds of thousands more.

It must address all of this, as well as the reason why the demand from most of the country that the government prioritize the release of the hostages fell on deaf ears, costing the lives of more than 40 people.

Those who return from the battlefield, some of them with long-term injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder, will also ask why this government continues to cave in to the ultraorthodox community and its demands that its members be exempt from military service. This places a heavier burden on serving soldiers and their families, at the same time vast sums of money are appropriated and doled out to a sector of society that contributes almost nothing to their country’s security or economy.

And finally, the road to healing must also include an honest debate about how to end the conflict with the Palestinians peacefully, and genuinely provide the Palestinian citizens of Israel with a voice in the governing of their country.

For all this to happen, voters in Israel will need to elect an antidote to everything that the Netanyahu government represents.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg