While remaining on a war footing, Israelis went to the ballots on Feb 27 to elect mayors and local government representatives in a vote widely watched as the first major political test for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government since the outbreak of war with Hamas in October 2023.

Seven million Israelis – including hundreds of thousands now mobilised on active service in the military – were eligible to vote, either in their towns and cities or at various military bases and mobile army voting stations.

The final tally of the local elections was released only on Feb 29. Despite predictions that the far-right parties associated with Mr Netanyahu might suffer a setback, it appears their vote defied predictions and broadly held up.

So, while all national opinion polls continue to indicate that he is widely blamed for the security failures that led to the current Gaza war, Israel’s voters are not necessarily flocking to moderate parties.

Israeli local elections – or municipal elections, as they are often called – do serve as bellwether indicators of the country’s political trends.

For instance, when Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party caused a political earthquake by ousting the centre-left Labour Party from the town hall of Jerusalem three decades ago, it proved to be a precursor to his rise to power at the national level. Jerusalem is Israel’s biggest city and official capital.

This time, the local ballots may not be so indicative of broader political trends. That is partly because turnout was low, at only 49.5 per cent of the electorate, despite the fact that Israelis were given a day off work as encouragement to vote.

The local elections’ result is even harder to interpret because Mr Benny Gantz, a former Israeli defence minister and by far the most significant rival to Mr Netanyahu, does not have a powerful and experienced local elections machine, and therefore the latest local ballots may understate his actual level of support.

Still, it is evident that, far from facing electoral destruction, Israel’s extreme right-wing political movements are able to reinvent themselves despite the fact that the government in which they are members failed to prevent the bloodiest attack ever recorded in the Jewish state’s history.

The extremist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Strength) party led by Mr Itamar Ben-Gvir, a minister in the current Netanyahu government who regularly makes racist comments about Arabs and frequently argues for the outright expulsion of Palestinians, made electoral inroads in a number of Israeli towns.

So have the ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious parties, who also argue for the annexation of all the occupied Palestinian lands. Orthodox Jews account for around 25 per cent of Jerusalem’s residents, but they will now control half of all the seats in the city’s council.

The elections also revealed a more profound polarisation of Israeli politics. The traditionally right-wing city administration of Jerusalem swung further to the right. In contrast, the more liberal seaside city of Tel Aviv, Israel’s second-largest urban centre, went further to the left, with the city’s Labour Party mayor easily winning an unprecedented sixth term in office.

More ominously still, the ruling Likud party now appears to be drawing closer to the more extreme far-right movements.

In Tel Aviv, for instance, Likud and Otzma Yehudit ran joint candidates. The growing unity among extremists is undoubtedly a trend that may be repeated in the forthcoming national elections in Israel.

Overall, the local elections were a disappointment for those opposing Israel’s current government, especially since they came after almost a year of massive anti-government protest movements.

Haaretz, Israel’s top opposition daily, said in an editorial on Feb 29: “The democratic camp, which for nearly a year turned out weekly for giant demonstrations, failed in most cases to translate the anger at the most useless and corrupt government in the country’s history into electoral gains in local ballots.”

Not all is lost for the opposition. The fact that Mr Netanyahu was absent from the local elections campaign is an indication that he is fully aware of his unpopularity.

It is difficult to see how the war in Gaza can end with the resounding victory he promises the electorate. And it will be impossible for him to avoid facing a national inquiry into his failures to prevent the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.

All these developments are likely to sap the government’s electoral standing even further, possibly to the benefit of the centrist and centre-left opposition parties in a future national ballot.

Political observers also agree that Israelis will face an early general election, perhaps as soon as the second half of 2024.

Nonetheless, it is clear that while the Israeli electorate may be moving away from Mr Netanyahu, a large segment of the Israeli public continues to support extremist movements and a surprisingly small segment of voters seems interested in a compromise with the Palestinians.

The Labour Party, still a public supporter of a two-state solution giving Palestinians their own state, continues to poll badly at the national level, and other centre-left parties keen to talk to the Palestinians are attracting less than 15 per cent of the electorate.