The Israeli military intensified its deadly attacks on Palestinians in different parts of the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours that preceded the announcement of the Knesset election results, which are expected by the morning of Friday, October 30.
At least six Palestinians were killed and dozens of others wounded in Israeli strikes that targeted different areas of the war-torn enclave.
The fatalities include four government employees, who were killed in an Israeli strike on the Ministry of Economy in the Al-Mawasi area, west of the southern city of Rafah. Thirty others were wounded in the same offensive.
The Gaza-based government media office condemned the assault in a statement published on Telegram, describing it as “a new crime and a horrific massacre that targeted a group of civilian public-sector employees.”
It added that “targeting government teams and civilian public employees is part of the organized crime that the Israeli occupation has practiced, and a malicious exposed attempt to push towards chaos and disorder by undermining the work of government crews and institutions, which seek to maintain the stability and safety of society.”
Meanwhile, two people were killed and several others were wounded when an Israeli drone struck a civilian vehicle near the entrance to the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, in the central Deir al-Balah Governorate.
The latest deaths take the toll of people killed by Israel in Gaza since the US-brokered ceasefire deal was reached in October 2025 to more than 1,574 people, with 5,867 others wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The ministry also reported that at least 74,570 people have been killed since Israel started its genocidal aggression on the besieged strip in October 2023.
Israelis headed to voting centers on Tuesday, October 27, in legislative elections to choose the members of the parliament, known as the Knesset.
The event marks Israel’s first general election since the October 7 attacks, which Netanyahu’s government expanded into a multi-front regional war.
For many, these elections serve as a direct referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right bloc he heads.
This bloc comprises the National Liberal Party (Likud) led by Netanyahu, the Religious Zionist Party (HaTzionut HaDatit) led by current Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Jewish Power Party (Otzma Yehudit) led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The coalition advocates for the consolidation of Israeli rule throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, explicitly rejects the possibility of Palestinian statehood, promotes the expansion of settlements and the implementation of hardline security measures against Palestinians. It also calls for disavowing the Oslo Accords, and the total disarmament of Hamas.
The primary competitor to Netanyahu and his coalition is the bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of the Israeli forces. It represents a center-right to center-left opposition when it comes to Israeli internal affairs, but of course not to Palestinians and their destiny.
Eisenkot is the architect of the “Dahiya Doctrine,” an Israeli military strategy that calls for applying massive, disproportionate firepower and the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure in order to create long-term deterrence, and discourage the local population from supporting any force resisting Israel.
He was also a member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet for the first eight months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Eisenkot’s bloc includes the Yashar Party, led by Eisenkot, and the Together alliance (Beyachad), led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett. It also includes The Democrats (HaDemokratim) – a merger of the Labor and Meretz parties – led by Yair Golan, a retired IDF Major General.
Israel Is Our Home Party (Yisrael Beiteinu) led by Avigdor Liberman, is also part of Eisenkot’s coalition.
Liberman, who formerly held ministerial portfolios in the Israeli government as minister of finance, defense, foreign affairs, strategic affairs, transportation, and national infrastructure alongside being a deputy prime minister, is known for his hawkish stances towards Palestinians.
Defending the use of live ammunition by Israeli forces against Palestinian demonstrators during the 2018 Gaza border protests (known as the Great March of Return), Liberman stated:
“There are no innocents in Gaza.”
Although the components of this coalition are united by their goal to oust Netanyahu, they remain deeply aligned with their political rival’s traditional right-wing stance regarding the Palestinian cause.
The coalition opposes the creation of an independent Palestinian state, while supporting the ongoing military operations in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and other parts of West Asia, and maintaining existing settlement frameworks.
Some of the coalition’s affiliated parties further encourage separating Israeli and Palestinian populations, and retaining complete Israeli security control over strategic areas such as the Jordan Valley. They also demand the full demilitarization of any future Palestinian entity.
Others call for the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, the annexation of Area C in the West Bank, and the entrenchment of discriminatory policies against Arab citizens in Israel.
The Arab-led lists represent the minority of Palestinian citizens in Israel (also known as Arab-Israelis), a community that makes up roughly 21% of Israel’s total population, estimated at 10.3 million.
Even though both lists fight for the same minority group’s rights, they hold opposing views on the goals, values, and strategy needed to represent them effectively.
While representing a minority, these lists hold a critical and often polarizing role in Israeli elections, as they frequently act as a critical balance of power that strongly determines whether a governing coalition can be formed.
These lists include the Joint List and the United Arab List.
The Joint List consists of:
The coalition advocates for Palestinian self-determination and civil rights, for an end to the Israeli occupation, and for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.
It also demands full legal equality and state recognition for Palestinian Arab citizens as an indigenous national minority, and calls for immediate government and law enforcement intervention to curb the increase in organized crime in Arab municipalities.
Structural reforms to secure building rights, expand municipal boundaries, and stop punitive home demolitions are top priorities on the Joint List’s agenda.
The United Arab List (Ra’am) is an Islamist and conservative political party led by Mansour Abbas, a prominent Palestinian politician, whose party was the first independent Arab-Muslim faction to join an Israeli government.
Unlike traditional Arab political lists, Ra’am demonstrates a willingness to ally with Jewish political parties in government. It uses a pragmatic, integration-focused strategy to gain political influence and enhance the socioeconomic wellbeing of Arab-Israeli citizens.
Ra’am prioritizes the immediate domestic needs of Arab communities inside Israel, such as fighting local organized crime, improving public infrastructure, securing budgets, and resolving housing issues.
Media reports indicated that Arab citizens voted in numbers not seen in decades, which in turn pushed Netanyahu to launch an urgent social media campaign, warning of the growing participation of Arabs.
Urging his supporters to go out and vote, Netanyahu appeared in a video, accusing Ra’am of bribing voters with envelopes of cash in the southern areas occupied by Israel.
“My brothers and sisters, Likud voters, this is an emergency call, because they are trying to steal the election from us. This morning, the police announced something serious and unusual. They caught three of Ra’am’s senior financial figures with envelopes of cash in the south. This is criminal. They will get to everyone. You have been warned, the voter turnout in the Arab sector in the south is incomparably higher than in the Jewish sector. You must go out and vote,” Netanyahu said.
He also claimed that left-wing women escorted Arab women to the polls.
Shortly before polls closed at 10:00 pm local time, the final reported voter turnout reached 74.3%, the highest in decades, with exit polls showing no clear winner, and pointing to a political deadlock.
It is expected that the final tally and initial results will be published between Thursday afternoon, October 29, and Friday morning, October 30, while the official results will be announced on November 4, 2026.
While many are looking forward to the loss of Netanyahu’s bloc in the elections, hoping that a new government will be less brutal against Palestinians and people across the West Asia region, analysts suggest that Eisenkot’s bloc adopts the same Zionist ethnic cleansing-based ideology.
In an interview with BreakThrough News, Israeli-American author, activist and founder of Palestine House of Freedom Miko Peled argued that there are no differences between the two competing blocs when it comes to issues like Israel’s war on Iran, the mass killing in Gaza, forcing Palestinians to flee the besieged enclave. Meanwhile, disputes on the internal Israeli issues – mainly the draft of ultra-orthodox jews in the military and initiating an independent inquiry into the failure of the army and intelligence on the October 7 attacks – remain serious.
Benjamin Netanyahu will almost certainly stay as prime minister after Israel’s elections on Tuesday, Miko Peled predicts – but he argues it won’t really matter if he doesn’t.
The Israeli-American author, activist and founder of Palestine House of Freedom in Washington, DC tells Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra who wins control of Knesset doesn’t really change things for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank; with challengers like Gadi Eisenkot, the ex-army chief behind the Dahiya doctrine of flattening civilian neighborhoods, and ex-premier and settlement champ Naftali Bennett who vows to block a Palestinian state, the war machine stays the same. But Peled says the ultra-Orthodox fight over the military draft and growing demands for an October 7 investigation are tearing Israeli society apart.
He explains why settler attacks on Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine and Congressional candidate (and liberal zionist) Brad Lander show the state’s true face, pointing out “it’s all settler violence, because they’re all settlers.” Peled warns that a new Israeli attack on Iran could finally test the limits of Tehran’s restraint – and that if Netanyahu falls, Democrats may rush to re-embrace Israel ahead of the midterms, but the honeymoon won’t last. Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today! #breakthroughnews
Iran demanded Israel’s expulsion from the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) for its crimes against Palestinians and other countries, calling it “the most important source of insecurity and instability” in the region.
“If the international community does not stop America and Israel today, their aggression will spread to all independent countries … it is time for this [Zionist] regime to be expelled from the CICA mechanism,” Iran’s deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said during its meeting on Thursday, October 15.
The seventh summit of the 29 member CICA process, formed in 1999 as an inter-governmental forum for establishing peace, security, and stability in Asia was held in Baku, Azerbaijan on Thursday.
Prior to Iran putting its demand for Israel’s expulsion, representatives of almost a dozen countries including Iran, Turkiye, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Egypt walked out of the meeting once the Israeli President Isaac Herzog started speaking.
This was the second time this year that a top Israeli official faced mass boycott on international forums. Last month, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing the annual session of the UN General Assembly, delegates from 77 countries boycotted his speech over the genocide in Gaza and other wars in the region.
Representatives from Kuwait also joined the walk out on Thursday, contradicting recent reports in Israeli and US media about it being one of the probable countries to join the so-called Abraham Accords, devised by US President Donald Trump during his first term in office to end the isolation of Israel in the region.
Despite the Trump administration’s push, so far only the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco have joined the accords.
Gharibabadi mentioned how Israel has been involved in two illegal wars against his country within 16 months from its continued “occupation of Palestinian territories, violation of the rights of Palestinian people, and the escalation of tensions in Lebanon, Syria, as well as other parts of the region,” the IRNA reported.
Gharibabadi claimed that his country believes that “one cannot speak of sustainable security in Asia while remaining indifferent to occupation, aggression, military threats, and violation of the rights of the Palestinian nation.”
He also pointed out the broader challenges to regional and global peace and stability, claiming that the CICA meeting was held at a time when the international order is facing “one of its most significant challenges, namely; the “normalization of the use of force, alongside attempts to impose its political will upon independent nations through military aggression, sanctions and threats.”
Gharibabadi highlighted the combined role of Israel and the US, claiming each of the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians and other countries in the region is committed with the support provided by the US who acts as a “big brother” to the Zionist regime.
Answering the concerns raised by several delegates in the meeting, Gharibabadi underlined that peace in West Asia and safe navigation through the waterways in the region is only possible if there is a permanent end to all kinds of aggression and war and there is respect for its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The CICA conference ended with the adoption of the Baku Declaration, which highlighted the need to address growing military, political, economic, and environmental risks.
At least eight Palestinians, including four children, were killed in Israeli assaults in different parts of the Gaza Strip over the last two days.
On Monday, October 19, Israeli forces launched drone strikes on north-central Gaza City and the southern city of Khan Younis, killing a Palestinian man and two children.
One day earlier, five Palestinians were killed and several others were injured in Israeli shelling and gunfire across the besieged enclave. This includes two children, who were shot dead by Israeli soldiers in separate attacks.
One of the slain children was identified as 13-year-old Tamer Soboh, who was killed in the northern city of Beit Lahia; the other was Misk al-Dalu, who died after Israeli troops opened fire at tents sheltering displaced people in al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, mass funerals remain common across Gaza as Palestinians dig through the rubble to recover the remains of their loved ones.
On Sunday, the remains of 75 Palestinians were buried in the Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in Gaza city, the majority of whom were children and women killed in Israeli airstrikes that targeted their homes during the three-year genocide.
While mass killings are underway in the war-ravaged territory, the humanitarian crisis further deteriorates not only because of Israel’s continued blockade and restrictions on the entry of goods and supplies, but also because of measures taken by some organizations concerned with providing aid to the population.
On Monday, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) announced that it will reduce food assistance in Gaza by around one-third due to shortage of funding. This means that 500,000 people will lose access to critical assistance.
It is worth noting that since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza, the WFP provided food assistance for up to 90% of families in the Gaza Strip.
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