Polarized, Anxious – and Hopeful: Israeli Social Cohesion in 2026

At summer’s end, as autumn 2026 begins, Israeli society simultaneously holds two seemingly contradictory truths. On the one hand, when Israelis are asked which challenge poses the greatest danger to their country, 55% point to polarization and internal division far more than those who cite the Iranian nuclear threat (23%) or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (18%). Roughly six in ten Israelis agree that there is a genuine risk of internal bloodshed. On the other hand, the very same society has registered a modest rise in its Hope Index this year: 60% of Israelis are optimistic about the country’s future, 75% assume that nearly all of their acquaintances and relatives will continue to live in Israel, and two-thirds believe that Israel is the right place for their children and grandchildren to live. A society that fears civil war yet believes in its future: this is the essence of the state of Israeli cohesion this summer.

We already presented this picture in the annual report of the JPPI Israeli Society Index, published on the eve of Israel’s 2026 Independence Day, and it came into still sharper focus during the summer months, as the election campaign began. It emerged at an especially sensitive moment: after almost three years of multi-front war, beginning with the October 7, 2023 massacre, reaching its climax in the joint Israeli-American attack on Iran in spring 2026 (Operation Roaring Lion), and subsiding at least formally – with the U.S.-Iran and Israel-Lebanon agreements signed over the summer. As the security arena calms somewhat, the political arena is becoming increasingly dominant ahead of the event Israelis have been awaiting: the October election, which many regard as one of the most consequential in the country’s history.

The election is increasing both tensions and uncertainty. For at least several months, it will intensify partisan rhetoric, and it is expected to decide questions that the competing camps regard as existential – to the point that roughly one-quarter of Jews and about half of the coalition’s opponents say that an outcome leaving the current government in power would constitute an “intolerable situation.”

In this article, we revisit some of the data collected throughout the year and use it to portray the state of Israeli cohesion at this particular moment, between a lull in the war and an election campaign. The resulting picture is not one-dimensional. It contains troubling findings, some deeply so, as well as encouraging findings, some surprisingly strong. Those seeking evidence that Israeli society is disintegrating will find ample support in the data. Those seeking evidence that it is more resilient and cohesive than it appears will find that as well. As usual, the truth is more complex than either account.

Three Numbers, One Picture

At the beginning of the annual report published in May, we presented three core indices designed to enable multi-year tracking of Israeli society: the Consensus Index (attitudes), the Emotional Proximity Index (feelings), and the Hope Index (beliefs). Together, they tell the story of cohesion in 2026, but each points in a different direction. This year, the Consensus Index stood at 3.71 (out of 10), up from the 2.88 calculated for 2024 (subject to the methodological qualification detailed in the report, following a change in the calculation method). The Emotional Proximity Index stood at 5.51, a modest decline from last year’s 5.95, indicating increased polarization and tension between groups. The Hope Index stood at 7.13, a substantial rise from last year’s 6.48.

Put plainly: Israelis agree with one another slightly more, feel slightly less close to one another, and are somewhat more hopeful about the future. The three arrows do not point in the same direction and that is itself a finding. A society undergoing genuine disintegration would be expected to decline on all three indices; a society in recovery would be expected to improve on all three. Israel in the summer of 2026 is somewhere else: substantive agreement and hope are rising even as the emotional bonds between groups erode.

An internal examination of the indices reveals clear differences among groups. The Consensus Index among Jews (4.18) is higher than among Arabs (3.41). The Hope Index among Jews (7.46) is significantly higher than among Arabs (5.79). Arabs’ overall Closeness score (4.28) is far lower than that of Jews (5.8). Within the Jewish public, the principal division across all three indices is political camp affiliation. This finding recurred, almost insistently, throughout our work over the past year: a dominant political and partisan lens shapes views across a wide range of public issues.

The Universal versus the Particular

Israelis themselves live within a kind of contradiction, and they are aware of it. A majority agree with the proposition that “on most important issues, most Israelis agree with one another.” About one-fifth strongly agree, and another one-third somewhat agree. In the same breath, those same Israelis agree that Israel has “major disagreements between the two blocs that cannot be bridged.” Broad agreement and unbridgeable disagreement coexist. Is this a contradiction? Not necessarily. The data suggests that agreement and disagreement simply inhabit different domains of public discourse.

The central and surprising – finding from this year’s Consensus Index is that Israelis agree more on their state’s “universal” values than on its “particular” questions. The item receiving the highest level of agreement concerned the essence of democracy: 59% of Israelis agree that a democratic state is one that includes both “free elections, the right to vote, and majority rule” and “values of tolerance and the protection of human rights.” The next item concerned equal rights: 60% of Israelis “strongly agree,” and another 18% “somewhat agree,” with the Declaration of Independence’s commitment to “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex” (among Jews, 88% agree). By contrast, on questions specific to Israel – what policy should be pursued toward the Palestinians, and whether Israel is “Jewish enough” agreement fell to only about 31%.

On the question of how “Jewish” the state should be, the public is distributed across the full spectrum: 36% of Jews believe that Israel is “not Jewish enough” (91% among Haredim and 64% among religious Jews), whereas 42% of secular Jews believe that it is “too Jewish” also the predominant view among Arabs (47%). On the Palestinian question, we recorded a noteworthy result this year: in our March 2026 survey, 49% of Jews selected the position calling for stronger Israeli control of the territories, expansion of the settlements, and perhaps annexation the highest level of support we have measured for this option in recent years. By contrast, 66% of Arabs chose the position favoring the pursuit of a peace agreement and a Palestinian state.

In other words, there is a broad basis of agreement in Israel on the basic commitment to democracy and on the principle of equality. There is no such agreement on the questions at the center of the election campaign: the Jewish character of the state, the future of the territories, and relations between majority and minority.

In the chapter on agreement, we presented one further finding that merits particular attention because it bears directly on the dispute accompanying the election campaign. The share of Jews who believe democracy means “both-and” both majority rule and human rights stood at 63% this year, a substantial decline from 80% only three years ago. This decline is plausibly connected to the continuing debate over the relationship between the political system, which expresses the preferences of the majority, and the judicial system and the Supreme Court. In other words, political conflict does not merely shift positions on policy questions; it is seeping into the most fundamental definitions, including the very meaning of democracy. This is one of the year’s troubling findings.

Even here, however, balance is necessary. Our statistical analysis of the four Consensus Index questions found only weak correlations among responses (the highest correlation was 0.19). This means that a person’s answer to one question does not predict the answer to another. Israel is therefore far from a situation in which two uniform, internally homogeneous camps hold coherent packages of views. The range of opinion is far more diverse than public discourse suggests, and substantial differences persist within groups and sectors as well as within ideological camps. The trenches may be clearly marked on the political map, but those who occupy them do not form uniform ranks.

Emotion Has Become Political

If the Consensus Index offered relatively encouraging news, the Emotional Proximity Index yielded more troubling findings. This index, which measures the extent to which Israelis from different groups feel close to or distant from one another, fell this year to 5.51. When we examined its components, the most important finding emerged: beyond the national divide, the factor that most impedes Israelis’ sense of closeness to one another is affiliation with a politically defined camp. Those who place themselves on the right feel close to right-wing groups; those in the center feel close to centrist groups; and alienation between the poles is pronounced. Right-wing supporters are strongly alienated from left-wing groups, and left-wing supporters are even more alienated from right-wing groups. Even groups whose definitions are not ostensibly political “settlers” and “Tel Avivians,” for example – are rated according to the respondent’s political frame of reference.

The group receiving the highest Closeness score is secular Jews the largest group among Jews and one that almost every group rates relatively highly. The lowest-scoring group is the Haredim, at just 3.79. No group other than the Haredim themselves gives them a high Closeness score (Haredim rate their closeness to other Haredim at 9.29). Secular Jews rate their closeness to Haredim at 1.81 the lowest score assigned by any group to another in the survey, except in assessments of Jewish-Arab relations. This finding cannot be separated from its context: the Closeness survey was conducted while the Knesset was grappling with legislation to exempt Haredim from military service, a measure that most of the public opposed. Yet Haredim also received low scores in our previous surveys, and the war during which Haredim did not join the ranks of those in uniform and demanded renewed statutory protection for the exemption deepened the rupture even among groups that had previously regarded them more sympathetically.

And then there is the national tension. About one-quarter of Israelis feel close to Arabs – and almost all of them are Arabs themselves. Only 8% of Jews report feeling close to Arabs. The asymmetry is stark and painful: 43% of Arabs report feeling close to secular Jews, compared with 10% of secular Jews who report feeling close to Arabs. In emotional terms, Arabs extend a hand far more readily than it is returned. Arabs also identified Jewish-Arab tension in our surveys as the principal tension in Israeli society, whereas only 4% of Jews did so. This gap in identifying the central tension is itself evidence of polarized perceptions of reality: the two groups live in the same country yet see two different maps of its fault lines.

Two background processes fuel this tension. The first is the war: on nearly every question examined, Arab attitudes differ radically from Jewish attitudes. The second is the high crime rate in Arab society, for which Jews and Arabs offer opposing explanations: Arabs primarily blame the state and its neglect; Jews assign most responsibility to Arab society and its leadership. In this atmosphere, we found similarly sized majorities of Jews and Arabs who believe that “many” or “most” members of the other group are extremists.

Optimism – with an Asterisk

Set against this emotional erosion is hope. The Hope Index stood at 7.13 this year, an increase over previous years. It comprises four components: optimism about the country’s future; confidence that those close to respondents will remain in Israel; the belief that Israel is a good place for the next generation to live; and the belief that it is worthwhile to invest in Israel for the long term. On all four, the aggregate Israeli response is positive: 60% are optimistic; 75% assume that most people they know will remain; 65% believe Israel is the right place for their children and grandchildren; and 65% believe that investing in Israel is worthwhile. Against the backdrop of three years of war, national trauma, and continuing political turmoil, it is difficult not to find these figures impressive. International indices consistently show Israelis to be unusually optimistic compared with citizens of other countries; this pattern held in our data this year as well.

But the 2026 Hope Index comes with an asterisk: partisan division. Hope is not evenly distributed. Israelis who support the incumbent government scored far higher on the Hope Index than those who oppose it; optimism declines along a clear gradient from right to left; and the Hope Index among Arabs (5.79) is significantly lower than among Jews (7.46). The “Strength and Optimism Map” presented in the report illustrated the gap. Among right-wing supporters, there is almost no difference between their sense of national strength and their optimism (8.50 versus 8.47): they feel that the country is strong and are confident in its future. Among the center-left, the gap is a full point (6.97 versus 5.97): they recognize the country’s strength but are uncertain that it is moving in the right direction. Hope on the right is unqualified; hope in the center and on the left is more guarded, almost conditional.

The largest asterisk of all concerns the secular public. Among those who identify as secular about four in ten Jews, the largest of all the groups roughly one-third (31%) answer “perhaps yes, perhaps no” when asked whether Israel is the right place for their children and grandchildren to live, while another one-fifth (19%) say that it is not. In other words, about half of secular Jews are not convinced that Israel is the right place for the next generation in their families. This finding is not new (we recorded a similar result at the beginning of the war), but it may be the most important social finding in the entire report. It does not concern intentions to leave as we shall see, Israelis remain – but rather a kind of wait-and-see posture, closely connected to the approaching election and especially prevalent among Israelis from the center and further left. The largest group within the Jewish public is leaving the future open, waiting to see where the country is headed. A society can live with disagreements for a long time; it is harder to live with a major group that feels, at least in part, that home may not be home for good.

Polarization Did Not Begin with the War

One of the annual report’s most important conclusions perhaps the most important for understanding the present moment is this: Israel’s principal social challenge is not a product of the war but of what preceded it. An atmosphere of political and social polarization has prevailed in Israel for several years. It developed gradually during a period in which five elections were held in rapid succession; intensified abruptly with the formation of the incumbent coalition in autumn 2022 and the announcement of the “judicial reform”; and left an imprint that survived both the shock of the massacre and the prolonged period of war. The war deepened the experience of polarization to some extent and added layers of meaning to it, but it did not fundamentally alter its causes or unsettle its foundations.

How deep is the concern? One indication of growing anxiety is the public’s response to warnings of civil confrontation. When former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak warned in March 2025 that “we are heading toward bloodshed and civil war,” we found that one-quarter of Israelis believed he was right, and another third believed that he had exaggerated somewhat but that the danger was nevertheless real. Overall, six in ten Israelis agreed that Israel faces a risk of civil war. Warnings of this kind were once readily dismissed as overheated rhetoric, but the public now takes the possibilities they describe seriously. At the same time, we found that 38% of Israelis were “very concerned” about the social situation and another 42% were “fairly concerned” eight in ten in all. Among non-Haredi Jews, the social challenge ranked second in importance among nine issues in our surveys this year, behind only the security challenge.

This conclusion that polarization predates the war has twofold significance on the eve of the election. First, it shatters an illusion common during the war’s early months: that an external threat would “heal the rifts.” The data we collected shows that even at the end of a difficult war, one that reminded the public of the gravity of external threats, most Israelis still judged polarization and internal division to be more dangerous to Israel than either the Iranian nuclear threat or the conflict with the Palestinians. The report’s comparison of Jews’ positions on the “Strength and Optimism Map” in January 2024 and January 2026 found that, despite severe upheavals, the averages had barely shifted. If anything, perceived strength declined slightly, driven specifically by Jews’ lower assessment of Israel’s social strength. The military demonstrated its power; society, in its own eyes, did not.

Second, and this is the practical implication: if polarization is not a product of the war, the war’s end will not cure it. Its sources are political and institutional; accordingly, any remedy will also have to be political and institutional. This is where the election enters the picture, as discussed below.

Political Camp Determines the Facts

How deeply has camp affiliation penetrated Israeli consciousness? In the annual report, we presented a series of examples whose cumulative effect is more troubling than any one of them alone. Is the Israeli economy strong? On its face, this is a question requiring a dispassionate reading of reality; in practice, right-wing supporters give the economy a score of 4.0 (out of 5), while left-wing supporters give it 1.4. Is the state budget designed on substantive grounds? Government supporters are forgiving; government opponents and the Arab public view it as a distribution of political spoils. Is Israel winning the war? Does the IDF’s senior command deserve public trust? Do the settlements contribute to security? Should the military adhere strictly to ethical standards in combat? Responses to all these questions, and many others, divide along a political fault line. As we wrote in the report, Israel in 2026 is a society in which the understanding of the facts themselves is subordinated to political camp affiliation.

This is not, it must be emphasized, symmetrical in substantive content each camp is convinced that it sees clearly while the other is captive to propaganda – but it is symmetrical in mechanism. The pattern is also evident in the most sensitive measure of citizen-government relations: trust in the government. Throughout our period of measurement, the incumbent government has never enjoyed the trust of a majority of the Israeli public. In spring 2026, amid the campaign against Iran, it won the trust of half the Jewish public for the first time. By July, after the agreement with Iran – which a large majority of Israelis saw as worsening Israel’s security position trust in the government had fallen to 37%, its lowest level in more than a year, with 48% choosing the emphatic response “do not trust at all.” The breakdown is razor-sharp: 77% on the right trust the government, compared with 9% in the center and zero on the left, where every respondent selected “do not trust at all.” By religious identity, 75% of Haredim express trust, compared with 19% of secular Jews. Two publics, two governments the same government.

Iran, Lebanon, Gaza

Against this backdrop, the importance of the two summer surveys conducted in June and July 2026 during and after the signing of the agreements intended to end the war becomes clear. They added an up-to-date layer to the annual picture: one of sharp disillusionment, but also of several unexpected points of agreement.

Disillusionment is evident first in the sense of victory. In March 2026, at the height of Operation Roaring Lion, 56% of Israelis felt that Israel was winning or had won the war the highest result measured over the preceding year. In July, only four months later, that figure stood at 38%, while 41% did not feel that Israel was winning. The year-on-year comparison underscores the depth of the erosion: in July 2025, after Operation “Rising Lion,” 54% felt a sense of victory and only 22% rejected that assessment. One year later, the picture had almost reversed. When we examined where the erosion occurred, we found that it was concentrated almost entirely outside the right. Among right-wing respondents, the sense of victory barely changed (77% last year, 74% in the latest survey); among those identifying with the center, it fell from 37% to 14%. A sense of achievement, too, is divided by political camp.

A similar, even sharper disillusionment emerged regarding the president of the United States. Among Israelis, the share expressing “a great deal of trust” in Donald Trump peaked at 34% in March 2026, but fell to just 7% in July, while 45% said, “I have no trust in him.” This decline, gradual but consistent since the agreement with Iran, is also noteworthy from the perspective of cohesion: it is one of the few cases in which public attitudes moved together across camps. Disappointment with Trump is shared. Although a majority on the right still retains at least some trust in the president, comparison with July of the previous year (29% on the right then expressed “a great deal of trust,” compared with 8% now) shows how profound the change has been even within that camp.

And here is the summer’s truly striking finding: the agreement with Iran produced a rare kind of consensus in Israel – a consensus of opposition. In July, 68% of Israelis said the agreement was not good for Israel, and 56% chose the emphatic formulation “very bad for Israel.” The share selecting this position varied within a remarkably narrow range across camps: from 65% on the right and center-right to 75% on the left; by religious identity, it ranged from 69% among secular Jews to 73% among Haredim. Majorities rejecting the agreement were recorded among voters for every Jewish party, from Religious Zionism (89%) to Meretz (81%). Not one Jewish respondent not a single one selected the option “the agreement is very good for Israel.” At the same time, the agreement with Lebanon generated the opposite consensus: 63% believed it was good for Israel, with similar majorities across all ideological camps and, in an even rarer finding, almost identical rates among Jews and Arabs (63% and 64%, respectively).

These two findings reveal something important about the limits of Israeli polarization. When an issue has not already been mapped onto the left-right axis when it has no partisan “owner” – the Israeli public is entirely capable of arriving at a shared judgment, whether favorable or unfavorable. In their peculiar way, these agreements are evidence of cohesion: not the cohesion of affection, but the cohesion of common judgment. Yet once an issue returns to mapped territory Gaza, for example polarization reappears in full force. On the right, 68% support a return to fighting until Hamas rule is overthrown; in the center and to its left, overwhelming majorities (70% to 92%) prefer an economic-diplomatic path. The arena closest to home remains the most divisive.

At the same time, Gaza is also the site of a shared and bitter disillusionment. In our measurements, the share believing that Hamas rule would be overthrown and cease to exist was nearly halved within a year, from 30% to 17% (among Jews, from 34% to 18%), while the share expecting Hamas rule to continue in its present form jumped from 27% to 42%. Promises of “total victory” have given way to lowered expectations and acceptance of an ambiguous reality. This is painful; yet here, too, those concerned about cohesion may find a measure of consolation: shared disillusionment is, in the end, a shared experience.

The Religious Divide

Israeli concern about social cohesion is deep, broad, and stable: 78% of Israelis told us in June that they were concerned about the state of social cohesion, a figure similar to those measured over the previous three years. As we wrote in the June report, the sense of social fracture has become a fixed and embedded feature of public consciousness. Yet within this stability, we detected a shift worth noting on the eve of the election: a change in which divide the public identifies as most threatening.

Tension between right and left remains the factor the public sees as exerting the greatest effect on cohesion, but the share selecting it fell from 56% to 46% in one year. At the same time, the share pointing to tension between religious and secular Jews surged from 20% in June 2025 to 32% this year, the highest level recorded in the three years of the index (among Jews, from 23% to 36%). This shift is not accidental. It reflects a year in which the conflict between most of Israeli society and the Haredi community over conscription, exemption, budgets, and demonstrations featured prominently in public discourse and, more than any other front, exposed the gulf between the coalition’s staunch supporters and most of its opponents.

The data we collected on conscription illustrates the depth of the impasse. At the level of principle, there was very broad agreement: 80% of the public supported Haredi service in principle. Yet the Haredi public itself opposes this in overwhelming numbers. In our survey of Haredi society, 93% said that full mandatory conscription was unacceptable, and a large majority rejected even more moderate arrangements. When the discussion moves from principle to policy, the general consensus fragments into camps: in July, 46% of Israelis said that additional sanctions and pressure should be applied, whereas a majority on the right (59%) favored conscription “only with the agreement of the Haredi leadership” a pattern reflecting, among other things, the price of coalition partnership. Above all hangs a cloud of skepticism: most of the public, including some who oppose sanctions, assumes that the coalition leaders’ principal objective in handling the conscription law is political preserving the coalition – rather than security-based or value-driven.

Haredi road protests against the arrest of draft evaders added an intriguing dimension. When, in July, we presented respondents with three positions heard in public debate, the most common response (39%) was that these were unjustified demonstrations that should be prevented. Almost one-third of the public (32%), however, adopted a position of reciprocity: “Roads could be blocked during the protests against the reform, so Haredim may block them as well.” This reasoning was especially common on the right (48%) and among Likud voters (51%). In miniature, this illustrates how polarization erodes norms: the legitimacy of a protest tactic is no longer judged on its own merits but by what the opposing camp was permitted or prohibited from doing. Measure for measure has become a constitutional principle.

The annual report also documented a deeper, slower shift: in the wake of the war, Jewish society is becoming more traditional, yet at the same time more polarized over tradition. The rise in religious observance and feelings of faith is concentrated among those who were already traditional or religious and among younger people, whereas the secular public the largest group within Jewish society registered a slight decline. Israel is not moving in one direction; it is moving in two opposing directions. Secular Jews, most of whom still believe that Israel practices “religious coercion,” will feel the country around them becoming more traditional. Others will assume that the changing reality justifies formally entrenching this growing traditionalism. These are the combustible materials of the coming decade, and the approaching election may ignite some of them. As noted, the question of how “Jewish” Israel should be is the one on which agreement is lowest.

Shame and the Hardening of Positions

In May, a video issued on the prime minister’s behalf under the title “Dad, Mom I’m a Bibist” depicted a young man politically “coming out” to his left-wing parents. In the June survey, we asked whether the video portrayed a real phenomenon, and the answer was instructive precisely because of its symmetry: 85% of those identifying with the right are convinced that some right-wing supporters are ashamed to reveal their views in their social surroundings, while 80% of those identifying with the left say exactly the same about supporters of their own camp. Each camp experiences itself as silenced, as a persecuted minority within the social spaces it inhabits. The fact that both publics report an experience of shame the right in spaces perceived as controlled by elites, the left in a public sphere where the right is numerically far larger may be the clearest evidence of emotional polarization: a society in which people on both sides are afraid to say aloud what they think.

Alongside the experience of silencing comes a hardening of positions. For the third consecutive year, we have tracked how important Israelis consider it that Israel’s policies be “the way they want them,” even at the cost of reduced cohesion. This year’s average was 7.92 (out of 10), higher than the 7.47 and 7.49 measured in the previous two years; the hardening was evident this year across every ideological group. At the same time, the downward trend continued in Jews’ willingness to forgo implementation of their preferences for the sake of cohesion on specific issues Israeli-Palestinian relations and relations between the government and the judiciary-while among Arabs the opposite trend emerged: a growing willingness to compromise. As in other findings, the groups at the ideological poles the right and the left are least willing to compromise, while willingness to prioritize cohesion rises toward the center of the political map.

Yet one finding makes the picture genuinely complex: in the same surveys, Israelis rated the importance of unity in society at 7.91 almost identical to the importance they assign to putting their own positions into effect. They want both: their preferred policies and unity, while refusing to acknowledge that the two sometimes conflict. Most also believe compromise is possible. When we examined a series of familiar disputes this year, we found that most Israelis believe that, in most public controversies, a compromise formula can be reached – one “that a substantial majority of the public would find satisfactory” even on issues often depicted in public discourse as intractable, such as public transportation on the Sabbath and civil marriage. The only consistent exception is the Haredi public, where a large majority assumes that compromise on religion-and-state issues is impossible. The public, it appears, does not believe the disputes are insoluble; it believes politics is incapable of solving them.

October: Tension and Opportunity

Into this reality comes the October 2026 election. From one campaign to the next, elections are routinely described as “especially fateful”; in the present case, however, the phrase seems to carry unusual force. The data we collected indicates that two camps are approaching the ballot box while viewing the outcome as an existential question. Among those seeking political change, about half of the coalition’s opponents told us that its continued rule would be, in their eyes, an “intolerable situation.” When an entire camp defines a possible democratic outcome in advance as intolerable, next year’s Hope Index will depend to a great extent on what happens at the ballot box and, even more, on what happens afterward.

In the July survey, we examined the structure of the campaign for the first time. Most voters had already decided: 53% said they were completely certain whom they would support, and another 29% were fairly certain. Certainty was greatest at the poles – 71% on the left and 58% on the right were completely certain whereas undecided voters were concentrated in the middle: on the center-right, 22% were still waiting to see the full party lineup, while in the center only 44% were completely certain. In other words, the campaign’s true battleground lies in the center of the political map among the very groups that the data identifies as the most balanced, most willing to compromise, and most vulnerable to swings between a sense of victory and disappointment.

Equally striking, the data indicates that Israel is effectively holding two different elections at once. When we asked which issue would determine respondents’ vote, security (40%) and relations between the government and the judiciary (30%) led on the right; in the center and on the left, the leading issue was “a more liberal state” (35% to 38%); and among Arabs, the leading issues were security and the economy, while the economy barely appeared as a decisive consideration among Jews. The two camps are not debating different answers to the same question; they are asking different questions. Relations between “government and the judiciary” emerge as the principal organizing issue of the right-wing bloc: 70% of those for whom this is the decisive issue prefer a right-wing coalition. Conversely, 83% of those for whom “a more liberal state” is the decisive issue prefer a coalition without Haredi participation. The October campaign will therefore be, among other things, a collision between two frames of discourse that scarcely meet.

All this promises months of growing partisan tension and uncertainty not only about the result, but also about the day after. No coalition formula wins majority support in our surveys. The public is divided among a change-bloc coalition including Arab parties (27%), variants of the right-wing bloc (30% combined), and three versions of a broad coalition (29% combined). Yet at precisely this point, as we wrote in the annual report, there is also an optimistic perspective: the election will give whichever government is elected and whichever coalition is formed an opportunity to reset relations between the government and the public as a whole and perhaps to restore public trust in the system. A government that governs for years without the trust of a majority of the public is a constant engine of polarization. It is difficult to imagine a substantial reduction in Israeli polarization without greater public trust in elected officials. The election, then, is both the risk and the possible remedy: it will aggravate the illness in the short term, but it is the only visible opportunity to treat it in the long term.

The Glass Half Full

Any article on cohesion in the summer of 2026 must, in fairness to the data, devote a section to the encouraging findings as well – and they are neither few nor marginal.

First, hope. The Hope Index rose this year to 7.13, and most Israelis Jews and Arabs, although at different rates are optimistic about their country’s future, expect those close to them to remain in Israel, and believe that it is worthwhile to invest in Israel over the long term. Even in a year of higher-than-usual emigration, there was no significant change in Israelis’ intentions to emigrate. A record 9.42 million departures abroad in 2025 coexisted with a negligible share of respondents who did not intend to return. Israelis complain, worry, and at times voice despair – and stay.

Second, interpersonal trust. The annual interpersonal trust index, measured in July, remained stable, with a slight tendency toward improvement across all items. The most notable change concerned the most sensitive item: the share of Jews who believe that most Arabs in Israel can be trusted rose from 22% to 26%. The entire increase occurred in and around the political center: on the center-right, the share doubled from 15% to 31%, and in the center it rose from 30% to 40%, while at the far right nothing changed. This remains by far the lowest figure on the list, and the positive movement was not reciprocal (Arab trust in Jews declined slightly). Nevertheless, after years of war that severely tested relations, the direction of change deserves note.

Third, agreement on fundamentals. As we have seen, a large majority of Israelis agree that Israel should be a democracy, endorse the principle of equal rights, and believe that on most important issues most Israelis agree with one another. The Consensus Index rose relative to the previous year’s calculation. The low correlations among positions also show that Israeli society is not composed of two monolithic blocs but is rather a mosaic a fact that complicates governance but also makes civil war more difficult.

Fourth, institutional functioning. Even in a year of war, polarization, and political turmoil, many state institutions have functioned at a high level, as demonstrated in the campaign against Iran, and society remains vibrant and engaged. Israelis’ deep concern about cohesion is itself a sign of life: a society indifferent to its fractures is more dangerous than one troubled by them. That 78% are concerned about cohesion also means that 78% believe there is something worth fighting to preserve.

Fifth, trust in the state’s professional echelons. Trust in the IDF’s senior command, even after some erosion during the summer months (from 82% among Jews in March to 71% in July), remained far higher than trust in the political echelon and was highest in the center of the political map. Trust in rank-and-file soldiers and junior commanders remained very high across all groups throughout the war. The state’s professional institutions, although they too are occasionally drawn into the partisan vortex, still retain a reserve of broad public legitimacy. This is the reserve on which the country will rely in the turbulent months ahead.

Distrust of the Rules of the Game

We conclude with a finding more troubling than any single figure presented in this article. In our summer surveys, we found profound suspicion on both sides of the political divide regarding the other side’s willingness to respect the election results. Coalition supporters suspect that, if they win, their opponents will refuse to accept the outcome and will try to prevent its implementation in the streets, in the media, and within institutions. Coalition opponents suspect that, if they win, the outgoing government will not hand over the keys in good faith and will try to change the rules of the game while it still holds the levers of power. Each camp, in other words, suspects that the other is not genuinely committed to the common framework – that it plays the democratic game only so long as it is winning.

It is important to understand why this finding is so serious. Democracy does not rest on agreement between camps; it rests on the consent of the losers on the willingness of those defeated at the ballot box to accept the outcome, trusting that the contest was fair and that they will have another opportunity. When each camp assumes in advance that the other will not abide by the rules, suspicion takes on a dynamic of its own, entirely independent of whether it is justified. It turns every move by the opponent into evidence, every post-election dispute into a potential constitutional crisis, and every escalation into “preemptive self-defense.” Distrust of the rules of the game is a self-fulfilling prophecy and that is why it poses a greater danger to cohesion than any of the disagreements described here, including the deepest among them.

This, then, is what we measured this year: a society in which substantive agreement has risen, hope has risen, emotional closeness among its parts has declined, and confidence that the common democratic game will continue is in doubt on both sides. The October election will turn not only on who wins, but also on whether the losers, whoever they are, believe they lost a fair contest – and whether the winners conduct themselves in a way that allows them to believe it. On the basis of the data we collected this summer, neither answer can be taken for granted.