Voters in West Bank Settlement Seek Tougher Leader After Hamas Attack

KIRYAT ARBA: At a polling station in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, home of far-right firebrand Itamar Ben Gvir in the southern West Bank, voter Lishay Cooper said the country needed a tougher leader than famously hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "Netanyahu has made mistakes, we can't count on him," the 22-year-old bookstore employee told AFP. "We need someone stronger." Behind her, volunteers for Netanyahu -- who is facing a close fight for reelection in -- handed out flyers to voters, but privately acknowledged they were on the turf of Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, staunch advocates of the settler movement. The pair have served as national security and finance minister respectively in Netanyahu's coalition government, one of the most right-wing in Israel's history and one of the friendliest to settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law. But Cooper said she decided to tack further to the right after losing friends during Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and now wants someone tough on Palestinians. "As far as I'm concerned it's Ben Gvir or (Moshe) Feiglin," she said, referring to a Smotrich-aligned libertarian Zionist candidate. "They've shown that they won't let this happen." More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in illegal settlements in the West Bank, which is also home to more than three million Palestinians. Violence has soared in the territory since the October 7 attack, with more than 1,100 Palestinians killed by soldiers and settlers, and nearly 50 Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations.