Israel's Pre-Election Sprint: Settlement Openings, Prison Videos and a UN Walkout

With Israelis scheduled to cast ballots on October 27, the country's political class has entered the final, most volatile phase of the campaign. In recent days, senior ministers have pursued a strategy that appears designed less to legislate than to perform for the base, using state power and public platforms to demonstrate toughness. The results have been visible not only in Jerusalem and at the United Nations, but also in the occupied West Bank, where settlement expansion, demolitions and movement restrictions have accelerated.

The most striking example came on September 23, when Israeli ministers and members of parliament attended the founding ceremony of a new illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank called Metzoke Eretz. According to Haaretz, the event functioned as a de facto campaign rally. Politicians in attendance, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, argued that only a government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would maintain the current pace of settlement construction — a pitch aimed squarely at voters who prioritize the settlement project.

The new site occupies private Palestinian land and was previously known as the Netzah Harel outpost, established in 2023. It sits near the Bedouin community of al-Muarrajat al-Wasat, which has already been ethnically cleansed. Metzoke Eretz is one of 104 settlements the Israeli government has legalized during its current term; all remain illegal under international law, a status that has done nothing to slow their expansion. The ceremony thus served a dual purpose: consecrating a new settlement and framing the election as a referendum on its future.

Demolitions have continued in parallel, with the southern occupied West Bank community of Masafer Yatta bearing the brunt. On September 23, Israeli forces razed 24 homes in the village of Jinba, displacing roughly 180 people, more than 80 of them children, according to the Israeli rights group B'Tselem. Such operations have become routine in recent weeks, leaving families without shelter as winter approaches and reinforcing the sense among Palestinians that the pre-election period has become a cover for accelerated displacement.

Movement across the occupied West Bank has also been severely curtailed. After days of road closures, Israeli authorities announced on Sunday a weeklong closure of the territory and its crossings for the Jewish holidays. Forces shut roads and village entrances around Ramallah, including those of Turmus Aya, Aboud, Nabi Saleh, Atara and Taybeh, and set up checkpoints at Yabrud, Ein Siniya and Jaba. The Palestinian news agency Wafa described the congestion that day as "severe and unprecedented," with hundreds of vehicles stranded at checkpoints.

The restrictions had direct consequences for medical access. On Monday, soldiers at Atara stopped ambulances from crossing, forcing residents to transfer patients through in private cars and hand them over at the checkpoint, according to field activists Ayed Jafry and Fidaa Barghouthi. Jafry also reported that troops closed the gate at Sinjil, the town's only entrance. For residents, the closures amount to a collective punishment that intensifies with every holiday season.

In occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian movement was further limited to make way for settler worship. On September 24, the far-right rabbi Yehuda Glick led a group in religious rituals inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which has since seen thousands of settlers enter during the Jewish holidays. The visits have inflamed tensions at a site that is both a central religious symbol and a perennial flashpoint.

Those tensions were already elevated after a Palestinian allegedly drove into a group of Israelis at a checkpoint west of Ramallah on September 23, critically wounding Neria Leiter, the son of Israel's ambassador to the United States, before being shot dead. The attack gave Israeli politicians another opportunity to project strength, and it fed into the broader campaign narrative of insecurity and retaliation.

In the West Bank countryside, settlers have moved aggressively against Palestinian agriculture. Israeli settlers uprooted olive trees in Beit Ur al-Fauqa, while Israeli bulldozers razed groves in Nabi Saleh and Beit Rima, destroying hundreds of trees, many of them centuries old, according to local activists. Israeli authorities described the Nabi Saleh operation as a security measure tied to the killing of a settler near the illegal settlement of Halamish on September 20. Activists, however, noted that the grove is near neither the spring where the shooting occurred nor any settlement, suggesting the destruction was punitive rather than security-driven.

With the olive harvest approaching, settlers were documented stealing olives in Sinjil, Turmus Aya and Umm Safa on Monday, according to Wafa. Such thefts strike at the economic core of rural Palestinian life, depriving families of income at the most important time of the agricultural year. They also form part of a wider pattern of settler violence that has gone largely unpunished.

Pogroms continued as well. In Farkha, dozens of settlers, some carrying military-issue rifles, beat two men on September 24. On Sunday, settlers beat two men in Burqa and attacked the Kaabneh community near Taybeh, cutting off its water and electricity, Wafa reported. These attacks underscore how settler violence has spread beyond isolated outposts into a systematic campaign of intimidation.

In the Gaza Strip, daily killings have continued despite the ceasefire framework, with drone strikes targeting homes and displacement camps. Among the week's dead was Jabr Muqbil, 34, an exchange-office owner killed in Deir el-Balah on September 24. Relatives who rushed to the scene were wounded in a follow-up strike, a tactic that has repeatedly multiplied casualties. Israel claimed Muqbil was a Hamas member, an assertion that could not be independently verified.

At the international level, Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly as delegations walked out — a scene that captured Israel's growing isolation even as its leadership presses ahead with policies that much of the world considers unlawful. The walkout also served Netanyahu's domestic purposes, allowing him to present himself as a leader unbowed by international criticism.

Domestically, the campaign has featured a series of provocations by senior ministers. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released another video from an Israeli prison, filming himself threatening to kill jailed Hamas figure Hassan Salameh. Smotrich, meanwhile, called for the army to "go to war" in the occupied West Bank. Both moves appear calibrated to appeal to hardline voters in the final stretch before polling day.

Taken together, these developments suggest that the election campaign is being fought not primarily over domestic policy but over the language of force. Settlement ceremonies, demolition orders, prison videos and calls for war have become campaign events, each designed to demonstrate who is toughest. For Palestinians living under occupation, the cost of that competition is measured in lost homes, uprooted trees, blocked roads and lives cut short.