Around half a million first-time voters will be eligible to cast their ballots later this year — a record number for this group — having grown up during the COVID19 pandemic and over 30 months of war.  Experts say they could determine the makeup of 17 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, and that they are predominantly right-wing and more religious than older voters. Those aged 29 and below will account for around 22% of the roll, according to Central Bureau of Statistics population figures.

So what they think matters.

With Israel now at war for two and a half years, the cost of living only rising, and an election campaign underway, The Times of Israel traveled by train from Nahariya near the border with Lebanon in the north to Beersheba in the south to solicit young people’s views.

Interviewees were asked the same set of questions, ranging from the societal and personal impacts of war, media consumption, leadership, and social divisions to their views on where they and the country would be in five years.

The young people were approached at random, although with an eye to representing different sectors of society. Excerpts from their responses are presented below.

Several people declined to be interviewed. Others agreed, but would not be photographed.

Most were suspicious and critical of the mainstream media. They worried about social fissures and were unsure how they would vote later this year.

Nahariya to Kiryat Motzkin

The journey began in Nahariya, near the Lebanese border. The route passes the northern coast towards Kiryat Motzkin, one of Haifa’s satellite cities, with its dense residential and commercial development.

Zinnat Abu Hassan, 27, an Arab Israeli from the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Ma’alot Tarshiha in the Western Galilee, was traveling to Tel Aviv for a cosmetics course.

Zinnat explained that the war has delayed her plans to open a cosmetics clinic and to take an Israeli conversion exam for a geriatric nursing qualification she earned in Jordan. She said Jewish Israelis are keeping their distance from Arab Israelis since the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in southern Israel.

“Wherever you go, if they know you’re Arab, or if you speak Arabic, people are frightened that you want to kill them or something,” she said.

‘I think about leaving the country all the time. I don’t feel that I can advance here’

‘I think about leaving the country all the time. I don’t feel that I can advance here’

“I think about leaving the country all the time,” she added. “I don’t feel that I can advance here. There’s war all the time. Prices are always going up. And [in the Arab sector, where gang warfare is rife], there’s always someone from a mafia who wants to take money from you.” Zinnat asked that her face not be shown.

Kiryat Motzkin to Binyamina

From Kiryat Motzkin, the train traveled........

© The Times of Israel