Unfazed by Western Sanctions, Israeli Voters Dismiss International Pressure Ahead of Elections

Israeli politicians have reacted with self-righteous anger to sanctions imposed by states including the United Kingdom, France, and Canada against the country's illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. However, analysts tell Al Jazeera that this latest example of Israel's international isolation, brought on by its treatment of the Palestinian people, has failed to sway the electorate ahead of October's elections.

Responding to UK Foreign Minister Ed Miliband's accusation that Israelis were ethnically cleansing the occupied West Bank, Gideon Saar of Israel accused his counterpart of spreading "outrageous lies" and attempting to interfere in the election through foreign pressure. Israeli President Isaac Herzog also condemned the measures, branding them a "gross interference in the democratic elections" of Israel.

In reality, the majority of Jewish Israelis have supported their country's war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank. A poll published in August, when the death toll for Palestinians killed in the West Bank had already reached 76 this year, showed that more than half of Jewish Israelis supported retaining the illegal settlements as part of any future agreement on a Palestinian state. Nearly 40 percent supported annexing the territory in defiance of international law.

"People just don't care that settlements are illegal," said Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political analyst. Discussing the UK foreign secretary's remarks regarding his own Jewish heritage when announcing the cessation of trade with Israel's illegal outposts, Goldberg added, "Ed Miliband expressed a number of laudable sentiments when announcing the measures, but we're at the stage where Israelis aren't even interested in the truth so much as they are the sentiment."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a serious risk of losing the upcoming elections, with many polls predicting that a coalition of parties opposed to him could win a majority in Israel's parliament. However, analysts note that issues like settlement-related sanctions will not be what loses him votes.

Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, stated that public backing for the government and opposition blocs is hardened, and nobody is going to switch sides over sanctions arising from the settlements. He added that the sanctions are unlikely to weigh as heavily with the electorate as the government's record and related feelings about Netanyahu.

"When people were asked what would determine their vote, security came first," said Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani. Explaining the mechanisms at play, he pointed to the normalisation of the settlements, noting that the occupied West Bank is increasingly referred to in Israeli public discourse by the biblical name "Judea and Samaria". He also noted that external sanctions do not necessarily translate into domestic political costs, and foreign pressure can be absorbed into an existing Israeli narrative of anti-Semitism rather than changing how the issue is understood.

None of Israel's most prominent politicians has criticised the government for its support of the settlements. Yair Lapid, a former prime minister and leading opponent of Netanyahu, focused his criticism on the condemning countries instead, calling the imposition of boycotts and sanctions a grave, wrong, and dangerous policy.

Gadi Eisenkot, another principal rival of Netanyahu whose Yashar Party manifesto does not mention either the West Bank or Gaza, has declined to speak directly on the sanctions. Benjamin Netanyahu has also yet to publicly comment on the measures, despite his Likud party championing settlement expansion for decades.

"The sanctions haven't particularly hurt Netanyahu, at least not as far as we can see in terms of direct influence on polling," said Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based pollster and public opinion researcher. Instead, attention has centered on other elements of the electoral cycle, including the emergence of new challengers to Netanyahu on the right. Scheindlin concluded that there is no real backlash from the sanctions, but rather a filtering process where critics dislike Netanyahu more and supporters feel the world hates Israel regardless.