An Israeli man carrying a gun crosses a Jerusalem road dominated by a campaign billboard featuring Benjamin Netanyahu Paul Nuki is Global Health Security Editor at The Telegraph. A senior journalist and former editor at the Sunday Times, he leads coverage on global security threats including epidemics, biosecurity, and international health crises. He has also written and reported extensively on the conflict in Israel and the Middle East.

5:00am GMT Nine years ago, Bezalel Smotrich released what was known as his Decisive Victory Plan.

“There is room for only one expression of national self-determination west of the Jordan River: that of the Jewish nation,” one extract read.

“The process by which the Arabs begin to truly internalise the loss of national hope, the absorption of the new reality ... will require patience and fortitude.

“Victory by settlement will imprint the understanding upon the consciousness of the Arabs and the world that an Arab state will never arise in this land.”Bezalel Smotrich, who has been playing a significant part in the West Bank, announcing the approval of more than 3,000 housing units in a settlement project last year Published five years before the ethno-nationalist politician became Israel’s finance minister under Benjamin Netanyahu, it outlined a single-state solution for the resolution of the Palestinian question.

The plan provoked anger when it was first released in 2017, but now reflects the views of large parts of the Israeli electorate.

Analysts say the plan has gained considerable traction in Israel, and some fear it will be implemented in full if the current government is returned to power in Tuesday’s knife-edge election.

On Friday, Mr Netanyahu ordered hundreds of troops into Hebron, in the West Bank, in response to the killing of two soldiers, and urged Israeli companies to use blockchain to avoid financial sanctions.

Commentators said he appeared to be preparing Israel for international isolation should his government be returned to power.

He has previously talked of Israel becoming a more self-reliant “super-Sparta” – a society in a state of perpetual military readiness.

This week, Mr Smotrich, speaking at the scene of the soldiers’ deaths, ordered “a series of demolitions” to “create deterrence and exact a price for the serious attack today”.

“We are already here with the equipment on the ground, sending an unequivocal message to our enemies: if you mess with us, we will exact a very, very painful price from you,” he said.

While Itamar Ben-Gvir, the extremist interior minister, dominates headlines, Mr Smotrich has been more influential in shaping Israel’s body politic.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-Right national security minister, has attracted headlines, but Bezalel Smotrich has had greater sway in government“Smotrich’s Victory Plan has already heavily shaped Israeli government policy and wider Israeli public debate by exploiting the national trauma and anti-Palestinian sentiment caused by the Oct 7 attacks,” Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told The Telegraph.

“A second term in government would give Smotrich the opportunity to try to fulfil his vision through the expansion of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”The Smotrich plan envisages a complete annexation – or “Judaising” – of the occupied Palestinian territories as an uncompromising solution to the long-running conflict.

The government would declare “full Israeli sovereignty” over the West Bank, and rapidly expand the settlement programme to create “a clear and irreversible reality on the ground”.

Palestinians who lived there – some 3.3 million people – would then fall into one of three categories.

Those happy to live under Israeli rule would be allowed to stay within a traditional Arab “tribal-familial structure”, but without national voting rights.

Those unwilling to “forgo their national aspirations” would be asked to leave and “receive aid to emigrate”.

Under Mr Smotrich’s plan, those who resisted the single state would be treated ‘with a strong hand, killing those who need to be killed’ And those who put up armed resistance would be “dealt with by the security forces with a strong hand ... killing those who need to be killed”. All their weapons would be confiscated “to the last bullet” according to the plan.

Mr Smotrich has been responsible for a large part of the administration of the occupied West Bank since February 2023 and has already put parts of his plan into action.

Israel is withholding between $5bn (£3.8bn) and $6bn in Palestinian tax revenues, effectively freezing the ability of the Palestinian Authority to administer the territory.

Meanwhile, the settlements programme has been dramatically ramped up since the Oct 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, and attacks on Palestinian towns and citizens have increased sharply.

An Israeli settler points a gun as he and others clash with Palestinians harvesting olives near Ramallah in the West Bank last week A Palestinian man lies wounded on a road after being shot by Israeli soldiers following the clash between settlers and Palestinian olive pickers near Ramallah Between January and July 2026, extremist settlers carried out 1,380 attacks across roughly 250 communities, resulting in injuries to approximately 900 Palestinians, according to data collected by the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“OCHA data further show that the monthly average of such incidents increased nearly 14-fold between 2020 and 2026,” said a recent report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Firefighters put out a car set on fire during a settler confrontation with Palestinians Mr Lovatt says Israel’s “messianic drift” has been “accelerated by the Oct 7 attacks, the expansion of the religious Right, and the lack so far of any counter-reaction that would make the average Israelis fundamentally rethink their views”.

But he adds that it would be wrong to put all the blame at the door of the Netanyahu government, describing it and its extremist ministers as “a symptom not a cause”.

Members of the Democratic Party, the only Israeli political grouping still backing a two-state solution, protesting during an appearance by Bezalel Smotrich at a Jerusalem market“The illiberal drift has been under way for years, if not decades,” he says. “Yes, the Right has been growing stronger and reshaping the national discourse, but the Left or whatever it calls itself these days has not had a real counter-offer.”Mr Lovatt points out that of the four parties that make up the opposition bloc in the current election, only one – the Democrats – continues to support a two-state solution, while the leaders of two are “avowed opponents of Palestinian statehood”.

In an interview with The Times of Israel published in August, Gadi Eisenkot, the likely leader of the opposition, said the idea of a two-state solution after Oct 7 was “delusional”.

The Smotrich plan, and its all-or-nothing approach to the Palestinian question, may also be driving a broader shift in Israel’s national identity.

Maj Gen Tamir Hayman, director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and a former chief of the IDF Intelligence Directorate, recently published a short essay arguing that the country’s “security concept” and strategic trajectory were changing.

“Jewish identity” was taking precedence over democracy, international alliances were being rejected in favour of “self-reliance”, and a new military doctrine had been adopted that normalised war and saw peace as “an expression of weakness”, he wrote.

And within this security concept, even the existence of established Arab states was being rejected.

“The underlying premise is that most Arab states are not genuine nation states, but collections of tribes and ethnic groups lacking a shared history and a foundational national vision,” he wrote.

“Consequently, undermining their stability is viewed as a natural process, one that Israel can manage ... and one that it should even encourage.”Maj Gen Hayman said in the essay that he was exaggerating but the point remained – Israel’s approach to security and its neighbours had radically changed since Oct 7.

However, although the build-up to Tuesday’s election has been lively, there has been virtually no public discussion of these core strategic issues.

Images of the Israeli election rivals on a poster as the country prepares for a contest that has focused mainly on personality Instead debate has focused on personalities – most notably Mr Netanyahu’s – together with the cost of living, blame for Oct 7, and conscription exemptions for ultra-orthodox or Haredi Jews.

“The elections will be hugely impactful, setting the pace and scope of Israel’s domestic transformation. But they will not decisively challenge Israel’s illiberal trajectory,” said Mr Lovatt.

“An opposition win will not mean an Israeli shift to the Left, but merely a repudiation of Bibi-ism, which is seen as corrupt and self-serving.”Defeat for Mr Netanyahu would give the Palestinians “some breathing room”, he added, but it would not result in “a fundamental change of Israel’s policy in the occupied territories”.

In contrast, a victory for the far Right would be “disastrous for Palestinians”, Mr Lovatt said.

If that happens, much more of Mr Smotrich’s plan is likely to be adopted, and international pressure is unlikely to be able to prevent it.

As Mr Smotrich notes in the plan: “Better people than I have already said that it doesn’t matter what the Gentiles say so much as what we Jews do.”