The Netanyahu era isn’t over. If anything, his popularity is on the rise

Tel Aviv: In the past year, Benjamin Netanyahu has presided over the worst security failure in Israel’s history and the biggest trauma for the Jewish people since the Holocaust: the October 7 attacks.

The International Criminal Court has requested an arrest warrant to charge him for crimes against humanity over the way Israel has conducted the war in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Credit: AP

That war grinds on after almost 12 months of fighting, with estimates from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry of nearly 42,000 Palestinian deaths. The mastermind of the October 7 attacks, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, remains on the loose.

Many Israelis – including the relatives of many hostages – are furious with Netanyahu for failing to strike a deal to bring the remaining 101 hostages in Gaza home (97 were abducted on October 7 and the other four were captured earlier). The belief he has not done so for cynical political calculations and a desire to hold onto power at all costs is widespread in Israel.

Its international reputation has plummeted, and its ties with its most important security partner, the United States, have frayed. Despite the momentous recent events in the Middle East, Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden have not spoken in two months, reflecting the leaders’ increasingly disdainful relationship.

A sticker depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left), with the words “Demolisher of Israel”, in Kibbutz Be’eri, where 101 civilians and 31 security personnel were killed by Hamas on October 7.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Yet Netanyahu – who first came to power in 1996 and has been the dominant force in Israeli politics for the past three decades – remains ensconced in the prime minister’s office. And not just that: his political stocks are on the rise.

It’s a dramatic turnaround from the weeks after October 7, 2023, when polls showed Netanyahu’s popularity plummeting and even friendly Israeli newspapers were demanding his resignation. “This is the very tragic end to the Netanyahu era,” Netanyahu’s biographer, Anshel Pfeffer, told The New Yorker last October.

Since then, as Israeli polling analyst Dahlia Scheidlin recently wrote in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the polls have shown an “incremental but steady rise” in support for Netanyahu’s government.

Netanyahu’s recovery, Scheidlin argues, began in April when Israel and its security partners successfully repelled a blizzard of rocket and missile attacks launched by Iran.

Then came the audacious assassination of Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, the shock pager and rocket attacks against Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. These operations have helped restore Israelis’ sense of pride and Netanyahu’s reputation as “Mr Security”: the only person capable of protecting the nation from the hostile forces surrounding it.

The escalation of hostilities in the Middle East that is alarming global leaders (including Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese) is working in Netanyahu’s political favour at home. His decision to intensify the fight against Hezbollah in a bid to secure Israel’s northern border is broadly popular among Israelis, as is his decision to hit back at Iran for last week’s missile strikes.

Meanwhile, the war in Gaza and the plight of the hostages are receiving less attention here – again, to Netanyahu’s benefit. The promised reckoning over the failures that led to October 7 – with those responsible to be held accountable – is nowhere to be seen.

As a result, Netanyahu’s Likud party is once again the most popular in Israel and his personal ratings have risen. A poll by Channel 14 released at the end of September found that, for the first time since October 7, Netanyahu’s governing coalition (the most right-wing in Israeli history) would be re-elected if an election were held today.

In Kibbutz Be’eri, Israeli flags fly next to a banner of an hourglass representing the fact that time is running out for the hostages in Gaza.Credit: Kate Geraghty

A Channel 12 poll released at the end of September, after the assassination of Nasrallah, found that 43 per cent of Israelis believed Netanyahu had done a good job in the war – up from 35 per cent 10 days earlier. He now easily outpolls his more centrist leadership rivals, Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, and has dramatically narrowed the gap with former prime minister Naftali Bennett to just three points behind. (Bennett, it is important to note, is in many ways more hawkish and conservative than Netanyahu.)

The next Israeli elections are due in October 2026, and Netanyahu looks increasingly likely to hold onto power until then. Since October 7 last year, Netanyahu’s coalition government has often appeared on the verge of collapse. At the end of September this year, he won breathing room when another small conservative party joined the government, expanding the size of his coalition and diluting the power of far-right cabinet members Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Many things can be true at once. At 74, Netanyahu is a divisive and widely distrusted figure in Israel, as well as its great political survivor.

The Netanyahu era will eventually end, as all eras end. For now, though, we’re still living in it.

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