In early September, the discovery that six Israeli hostages had been murdered by their Hamas captors while the army was operating near the tunnel in which they were being held prompted large crowds to take to the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities to protest. At the center of the consternation and anger was the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel’s main union, the Histadrut, called for a brief but significant strike. Opposition politicians have expressed dissatisfaction with the way the prime minister has approached hostage and ceasefire negotiations, for which he is accused of failing.
Behind closed doors but also in public, top military commanders and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have said they favor reaching a deal that would prioritize the release of hostages over efforts of Netanyahu to maintain military control of the area. . Gaza’s border with Egypt, which complicates things.
However, although he is deeply unpopular outside his right-wing base, a recent poll for the Maariv media outlet found that Netanyahu’s Likud party, which many believed could not personally survive the fallout from the surprise attack by Hamas almost a year ago, would win. the greatest number of seats if an election were called now. Analysts point out that this trend will continue, at least in the short term. A Channel 12 survey last Sunday, two days after the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, showed a slight increase in votes, although to the detriment of other parties in his coalition.
Clinging to power
The reality is that even before Nasrallah’s death, Netanyahu has surprisingly weathered the storms as Israel’s war in Gaza drags on and hostilities rage on fronts from Lebanon to Yemen and escalate significantly.
On the world stage, Netanyahu, and Israel by association, have been criticized and isolated. As part of his speech to the UN General Assembly in late September, the Israeli Prime Minister had to bring his own chorus of admirers to cheer him from the podium, shortly before Nasrallah’s assassination, while many many diplomats paraded.
In Israel, the majority still believes he should resign, especially given the serious security lapse that made the October 7 Hamas attacks possible. Yet Netanyahu clings to power, paradoxically playing with the same mechanisms of the Israeli coalition system that defeated previous governments, including his own.
The failure of the opposition
If the polls show anything, it is not so much a landslide vote in his favor as the inability of the Israeli opposition to capitalize on his unpopularity.
Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst and polling expert, divides the story of Netanyahu’s political survival into several distinct phases. “First, he remains in office because there is no legal mechanism to go to elections, even if people feel bad about the government if it does not fall. » “In the first days after the October 7 attacks, many people did not want elections because we were on the verge of a major war,” he says. “We then entered a second phase in which there was no serious opposition despite serious levels of mistrust. During the third phase, around March-April, major protests took place again, but this is also when regional escalation with Iran began. And that’s also when we start to see its resurgence in the polls.”
Even those who predicted Netanyahu’s political demise in the weeks after October 7, including his staunch critic, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have been forced to reconsider their predictions. Speaking to Politico last November, Olmert claimed the prime minister had been mortally wounded. “[Netanyahu] He has diminished as a leader. “He is emotionally destroyed…Throughout his career, he sold the lie that he was the reincarnation of the country’s security.”
Today, Olmert attributes Netanyahu’s remaining in power to his focus on his own survival, risking everything – both personally and within Israeli institutions – in the endeavor. “Netanyahu’s performance is masterful,” he admits. “There’s no substance, there’s no depth, there’s no real political vision… It’s pure theater.” “The fact is, since he has nothing else to sell, what he sells without limits is incitement and polarization. “He knows brilliantly how to manipulate divisions to strengthen his political base,” he says.
However, according to Olmert, Netanyahu would still face difficult times in an election, since he would not reach the threshold necessary to form a governing coalition, or 61 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.
“Throughout this year, there has not been a single election in which his coalition won more than 52 seats, compared to 64 today. The problem is that the opposition is also divided. “There is not a single politician with the charisma who could make a difference,” he says. In this sense, he says he does not see “any politician with the necessary fury, who threatens to explode. They are all honest people, but they are too restrained to have the language necessary to confront the operations of the poison machine.
For Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow in the Middle East program at Chatham House, Netanyahu continues to benefit from the fact that Israel is in the middle of a conflict, even if he is still held responsible for its genesis. “There has been a combination of problems from the beginning, including the belief in Israel that you cannot replace a prime minister in times of war,” he said.
Mekelberg also believes Netanyahu is taking advantage of the lack of opposition within Likud and more broadly. “The opposition is weak and there is none within Likud. It’s Bibi’s party. There is no situation in which someone can say, “Thank you very much, but now you are a burden,” he emphasizes.
Legitimize the far right
The dynamics of Netanyahu’s current coalition, the most right-wing in Israeli history, have made it exceptionally stable. The position of far-right figures such as Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who oppose any agreement leading to a ceasefire in Gaza, has allowed Netanyahu to escape US pressure for a ceasefire and prolong the war. This, in turn, has further removed the prospect of elections.
And despite rumors that the far right might leave the coalition, analysts see no real evidence that they will come to fruition. “The far right has no alternative. He thinks this is his moment. And Netanyahu legitimized them,” says Mekelberg.
In September, in a much-anticipated move, Netanyahu brought back his Likud rival, Gideon Saar, and his faction into the cabinet, expanding the coalition in a bid to undermine the influence of far-right parties and act as a opponent of Gallant, his main rival.
According to Scheindlin, if the government does not collapse, there are two possibilities: that the legislature ends or that Shas, one of the main ultra-Orthodox parties, withdraws from the coalition and forms a new government with the opposition without new elections being called. .
However, Israel is entering a phase of high-intensity conflict against Hezbollah.
None of this makes the future trajectory of Israeli politics or Netanyahu any more predictable in the short term, especially since Israeli governments have often failed on issues far from the daily agenda.
“It’s not just a question of will [de Netanyahu] to survive,” says Mekelberg. “The survival of Israel as we know it is at stake. » “It’s not that Israel is going to disappear. What is worrying is whether it will ever be the same again. You see how society evolves, how the values of its democratic system are compromised and the values undermined.”
Translation by Emma Reverter.
