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A demonstrator stands next to a banner with an image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as she attends a rally in Tel Aviv to demand an immediate cease-fire in Gaza on Jan. 27, 2024.
Can Bibi’s career survive the Israel-Hamas war?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced growing calls to resign since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. In recent days, protesters have gathered outside his home. The war in Gaza isn’t going well. Hamas is far from being destroyed, and roughly 130 hostages remain in Gaza – prompting their family members to storm parliament in outrage. Meanwhile, there are questions as to whether Bibi’s governing coalition will fall apart.
It often seems as though the 74-year-old leader is a breath away from being pushed out of office. But is this war really the last chapter in the chaotic career of Israel’s longest-tenured prime minister?
“After October 7th, everybody was saying, ‘I think he's finished. He's done.’ And he's still there. I think it's probably a matter of time, but it's already been several months,” says Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel-Palestine analyst for the International Crisis Group who’s based in Israel, adding that it’s “hard to see what the specific tipping point will be that will bring him down.”
Even before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Netanyahu’s political career was on thin ice as he contended with a corruption trial and mass protests over his government’s judicial overhaul plan. The Israeli leader has since faced blame for security failures surrounding the Hamas attack, on top of fierce criticism over the hostage situation and international criticism over the war in Gaza.
But Bibi has said he is opposed to a permanent cease-fire, even if it means bringing the hostages home – contending that it would only be a matter of time before Hamas attacked again. The current negotiations are reportedly for a limited cease-fire.
It’s complicated. Recent polling paints a complex picture in terms of how Israelis feel about the war – they’re angry at the people charged with protecting them – the ones running the war – but strongly support the fight against Hamas.
One recent poll from Tel Aviv University’s Peace Index showed most Israelis (53%) think the government has “no clear goals” in the war, but it also found that a large majority of the Jewish public think the IDF uses adequate or too little force in Gaza and 88% believe the extent of Palestinian casualties is justified – even as the international community increasingly criticizes Israel over the rising death toll. But the poll also found the Jewish public is relatively split on whether the government should prioritize eliminating Hamas at all costs (50%) or getting the hostages returned in any way possible (48%).
Still, one thing is clear: The Israeli public overwhelmingly disapproves of Netanyahu, with only 15% wanting him to stay in power after the war, according to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute. And many seem to believe that Bibi views the war with Hamas as a political lifeline. A recent Channel 13 survey found 53% of Israelis believe Netanyahu’s wartime decisions are primarily motivated by personal interest.
“There’s a weird kind of paradox or conflict between the support that the war effort has – the legitimacy and consensus around wanting to remove Hamas – but then there's also consensus that Netanyahu has to go. Nobody trusts him,” says Zonszein, adding, “Everybody thinks that he's just dragging this out because it keeps him in power.”
Wartime elections? It’s becoming increasingly clear that Netanyahu’s goal of eliminating Hamas is “not feasible,” says Zonszein, and members of Bibi’s war cabinet have begun to openly challenge him on this.
Gadi Eisenkot, a war cabinet minister and former chief of staff of the IDF, recently said that discussions of destroying Hamas amount to “tall tales.” Eisenkot, whose son was killed in Gaza in December, said that elections should be held in the coming months.
Dozens of ex-top national security officials on Friday sent a letter to Israel’s president and speaker of parliament that pushed for elections and Netanyahu’s removal – referring to him as an “existential” threat to Israel.
In the end, rising public anger over the lack of movement on bringing the hostages home could be what brings Bibi down. Though it would be a “crazy scenario,” says Zonszein, for Israelis to go to the polls amid what is “probably the most decisive war Israel's had since its founding,” if a hostage deal isn’t reached in soon, “the pressure to have an election will increase.”
But a lot has to happen for elections to occur, and if there is a deal that brings the hostages home, it’s difficult to say what that would mean for Netanyahu’s political future.
“It seems like the only clear victory that he can get at this point is getting all the hostages back,” says Zonszein, but if this involves stopping the war and releasing Palestinian prisoners, it could trigger far-right members of his coalition to leave – putting Bibi in a precarious position.
But getting hostages released “would definitely be a huge relief and a huge win for Israel,” Zonszein adds, which has been “fighting with really no results so far.”
President Joe Biden speaks to the press aboard Air Force One en route from Israel, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Oct. 18, 2023.
Biden’s mission impossible
It was the best of trips. It was the worst of trips.
As the bullets, rockets, and bombs flew, Joe Biden set off for Israel this week, serving as a kind of human shield while aiming to give pause and reset some boundaries.
The US president had the best of intentions ahead of his trip:
- Meet Israeli, Palestinian Authority, and Jordanian leaders not to broker peace — as he fully supports Israel’s war against Hamas, a terror group that massacred 1,300 people and still holds hundreds of hostages, including Americans — but to call for some restraint amid the chaos.
- Restrain the Israelis from the collective punishment of Gazans and allow a humanitarian corridor for food and water.
- Restrain the leadership of the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority from rising up into a Third Intifada.
- Restrain Hezbollah and its Iranian backers from joining the fight in the north.
This was old-school US shuttle diplomacy, buttressing hard power — two aircraft carriers, billions in support to Israel and Egypt – with the soft power of persuasion. It is the kind of power Biden has trained all his life to use. He was making this war his war.
Then came the tragedy at the hospital in Gaza.
That tragedy — a human one, first and foremost — was also a diplomatic one that undermined Biden’s agenda. His position as a powerbroker was deeply weakened. Face-to-face meetings were canceled in Jordan and with the PA. Protests erupted. Blame was assigned even before the smoke cleared.
It was, as Ian Bremmer said so long ago, another example of the GZERO world, in which the great powers flail to restore order in a global structure they can no longer control. The perma-crisis world – wars in Europe and the Middle East, pandemics, climate change, pick your mega crisis — all work to solidify that view. But that doesn’t mean Biden’s efforts were a failure or unimportant.
Let’s pause on that tragedy, which is now a turning point in the war. In the minutes after the blast, Hamas immediately claimed Israel had bombed the hospital. Without any investigation, many mainstream media sources, including the New York Times, followed. Then Israel weighed in, claiming it was not their rocket but one launched from Gaza by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller but related group to Hamas.
There was a difference though: Israel provided some evidence of its claim, while Hamas has still not done so. Biden corroborated the Israeli claim based on US intelligence. New analysis from open sources has shifted to the view that the rocket did come from Gaza, though there is no definitive proof yet. Context also has emerged: The bomb didn’t hit the hospital itself but an adjacent parking lot. This is not to diminish the human impact of the blast, but it’s important to get this right since the event is having such a geopolitical impact.
It is common to dismiss this all as academic. One side will believe what it wants, and the other will believe what it wants. So … who cares if we ever know “the truth”? When the disinformation becomes the information itself, people give up on the importance of truth. The reaction to events buries the facts so deeply they no longer have a consequence.
But it does matter who did it. Justice matters. Accountability matters. Propagandists need to destroy the causal relationship between act and actor because they are not interested in building a lasting peace, but rather in destroying it. Destroy truth and you destroy the possibility of reconciliation. So, however inconvenient the facts are about the bombing in the hospital parking lot, there ought to be accountability.
That kind of investigation requires time and attention to detail. That was part of what the Biden pause and restraint was all about. In these conflicts, details matter.
Avoiding unhelpful generalizations also matters. Terms like “pro-Israel” or “pro-Palestine” are unhelpful, because such broad categories obscure important realities within each society. Millions of Israelis openly disagree with Netanyahu’s policies and yet defend Israel with their lives. These are not contradictory positions. As Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi recently explained, “Israelis have never gone to war so lacking in faith in their leaders …We have never experienced anything like this: a prime minister, in time of war, who is afraid to mingle with the troops because of the outrage he is likely to encounter.”
The same is true for Palestinians. “Most Gazans (and a huge majority of Palestinians) reject Hamas and see its atrocities as a barrier to liberation and statehood,” author Doug Saunders tweeted, concluding that “this is a war of non-representatives.”
Making distinctions and avoiding generalizations matters more than ever, especially if there is a possibility to broker some kind of path forward. As Halevi writes from the Israeli point of view, “Leftwing Jews need to understand that the Jewish people cannot afford the purity of powerlessness, while rightwing Jews need to understand that power requires moral limits. As a people, we must not be indifferent to the anguish of Gaza. And we must not allow that anguish to undermine our resolve to destroy Hamas.”
Biden’s trip might have failed on some levels – the war continues, the people in Gaza and Israel are still suffering, and there is still very much the risk of regional escalation. But on another level, it was a critical sign that the world is not giving up on pushing back against the chaos and that working for and paying for a way out of these conflicts remains a responsibility of big democracies. The same is true for Ukraine. These are all challenges for Canada and other NATO allies. Words of support are important, but that’s a lot different from actual help. Biden is providing both.
Polls show some believe there will never be peace in the region, which is not surprising but depressing. After all, the French and the Germans made peace after two world wars and millions dead. The US and the Japanese made peace after a war that included two nuclear bombs. In Northern Ireland, the Troubles ended. So it is possible. Why? Because people want peace.
One small, virtually irrelevant moment the other day in Montreal reminded me of this desire. I was taking an Uber to the airport, and the young driver and I got into a long discussion about the war. He told me he was a Muslim and an immigrant, and his girlfriend was Palestinian, who had just come from a rally and was in tears about the war. We spoke openly, honestly, and in detail about the situation, sometimes disagreeing and sometimes not. As he dropped me off, I thanked him for the ride and said, “I love your attitude.”
I guess he didn’t hear me that clearly, because he turned around, smiled warmly, and said, “I love you too.’
It hit home. Even though it’s just a minuscule anecdote in a vast, hard world of geopolitics and war, it was a tap on the shoulder, where two strangers from different places badly wanted to hear something the world doesn’t say much these days, as if saying these small things doesn’t matter at all.
Israeli soldiers stand guard near the Israeli-Lebanon border in the northern town of Shlomi.
Fears of a wider war grow
Could the war between Israel and Hamas engulf other areas and actors in the region?
The biggest concern is that Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite Muslim political party allied with Iran – and deemed a terrorist organization by the US – will open a second front along the Israel-Lebanon border.
On Sunday, Hezbollah sent a missile into Israel, killing one civilianin response to Israeli strikes the previous day that killed two civilians and a Reuters cameraman. In Lebanon, the United Nations peacekeeping force UNIFIL reported that an unidentified rocket struck its headquarters in the southern part of the country.
Israel has declared its northern border with Lebanon a closed military zone, and on Sunday it warned civilians not to come within 2.5 miles of the border or risk being fired upon.
Over the weekend, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah met with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who subsequently demanded that Israel cease its operations in Gaza or suffer “a huge earthquake.” The implication? That an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza would push Hezbollah into the war.
If Hezbollah joins the conflict, this would require a significant Israeli response involving both air and ground forces, and analysts fear this could escalate into a wider regional conflict with Syria and the possibility of attacks from Iraq, Yemen, and Iran.
Another possible flashpoint is the West Bank. Since the Hamas attacks last Saturday, at least 55 Palestinians have been killed and over 1,100 wounded in attacks by settlers and operations by the Israeli Defence Forces. The IDF said on Sunday that it had arrested 330 people in raids across the West Bank, including 190 connected with Hamas, as terror attacks against Israelis have escalated in the area.
Over 500,000 Jewish settlers live in nearly 150 settlements across the West Bank, alongside 2.5 million Palestinians. Since the attacks by Hamas, settler groups have been mobilizing. One WhatsApp group of over 800 participants has told residents to prepare for “the possibility of mobilizing for a joint activity with the security forces for the immediate demolition of terrorist houses.”
In response, the IDF has emphasized that the responsibility for security in the settlements and on the roads lies with the military alone. The fear is that settler attacks could cause an escalation of violence and provoke the opening of another front in the war, further stretching Israel’s military and hampering efforts to defend itself.US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to members of the media before leaving Cairo, Egypt, on Sunday.
World powers weigh in on Israel-Hamas War
As the crisis in Israel and Gaza deepens, various world powers are weighing in and offering to help mediate, some for their own geopolitical interests.
Washington repeatedly offered unwavering support to Israel following the Hamas attacks, but it is now also trying to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. In a phone call Saturday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – whose authority extends primarily to the West Bank – President Joe Biden pledged his full support for "urgently needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian people, especially in Gaza."
On Saturday, Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reiterating US military support for Israel but also broaching the need for international coordination to “ensure innocent civilians have access to water, food, and medical care.” In turn, on Sunday, the US announced it was moving a second aircraft carrier into the region, and Israel restored the water supply to southern Gaza, though Palestinians have criticized the move as a “publicity stunt” since much of the infrastructure has been damaged by shelling or is unusable due to a lack of electricity.
In a broadcast interview on Sunday, Biden said that Israel reoccupying Gaza would be “a big mistake."
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the reopening of the Egyptian-controlled border crossing into Gaza and that the US was working with Egypt, Israel, and the UN to expedite assistance across the border, but there are conflicting reports as to whether a deal is in place.
Blinken has been on a whirlwind diplomatic tour in recent days, visiting with six of Israel’s neighbors in an attempt to prevent escalation. On Monday, he returned to Israel as its military prepared for an offensive in Gaza by land, sea, and air, with emphasis on “significant ground operations.”
Meanwhile, China is also getting involved. Beijing is reportedly in “intensive communication with all parties to push for a ceasefire and an end to the fighting,” with a focus on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On Friday, Zhai Jun, China’s special envoy to the Middle East, met representatives from the 22-member Arab League in Beijing, seeking to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in conjunction with Egypt. The next day, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud and said that Israel’s actions have extended beyond self-defense. China’s top diplomat, Wang Li, said that "The crux of the issue lies in the fact that justice has not been done to the Palestinian people.”
Statements like these, together with Beijing’s unwillingness to condemn Hamas, signal that China may be returning to its stance from the 1960s and 70s when it openly supported the Palestine Liberation Organization’s bid for statehood. Analysts believe China has concluded that Israel will always align with US interests and has “picked a side” to gain favor among Arab nations and win their support for its larger authoritarian agenda.
The conflict between Israel and Hamas also provides fertile ground for Russia to divert attention from its war with Ukraine. Russian diplomat Konstantin Gavrilov told the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper, “Ukraine’s sponsors will be distracted by the conflict in Israel … the amount of military aid will go down … and the course of the operation may turn sharply in [Russia’s] favor.” Nonetheless, on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to mediate the conflict, saying that “Russia is ready to coordinate with all constructive partners.”
While no one expects Moscow to play a pivotal role in talks, it has sway with a number of parties involved, including Iran, which has threatened “far-reaching consequences” if Israel enters Gaza. Russia also has ties with Qatar, and a state media outlet reported that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov may soon meet with Hamas officials in Qatar to discuss the potential release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas.
Apart from Iran, Qatar arguably has the most influence over Hamas as its government has reportedly supported Hamas to the tune of $30 million a month. Qatar is also able to put financial pressure on Iran, as evidenced by its recent agreement to a US request that it not allow Tehran access to $6 billion in Iranian funds that were unblocked as part of a prisoner swap in September.A woman walks past the site where a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip landed in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Oct. 7, 2023.
Where does Israel go from here?
Citizens awoke to a “dystopian nightmare” on Saturday – with sirens and rocket attacks but little by way of clear information, says Tamar Uriel-Beeri, managing editor of Jpost.com. She was in Tel Aviv visiting family on Friday and was forced to run with her husband and four-month-old baby to a bomb shelter on Saturday morning amid the sirens.
Communication flows improved by later in the day on Saturday, she said, and she and her family made their way back to Jerusalem in the evening. “We thought we had sort of a window of quiet in the waves of attacks. Unfortunately, we were wrong, and during the drive, we had to take cover three times.” That meant stopping along the freeway, pulling their infant son from his car seat, “sprinting to the side of the highway and basically using ourselves as human shields in the hopes that Iron Dome takes the hit instead of us.”
Back in the capital, things are a bit calmer, Uriel-Beeri says, but she notes that people in the center of the city are fearful and largely staying indoors. She expects her husband to be called for reserve duty at any moment.
While Israelis are uniting in the face of this crisis, it doesn’t take away from the sense of frustration many have with the government, Uriel-Beeri adds. “There is definite frustration. Well, frustration is an understatement. There is an outright anger at this having happened.”
How did this happen? Many observers, including Eurasia Group president and founder Ian Bremmer, have described the events as “Israel’s 9/11,” and referred to it as a shocking intelligence failure that took Israel by surprise. But others say there were signs an attack was coming.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University outside Tel Aviv, said Sunday that Arabic social media had been rife with discussions about this type of attack. “(It) was clear this was something [Hamas] was planning, for two reasons. First, they were talking about it, and not in secret. Second, this is more or less the only thing they can do. Every other thing actually failed.”
Kedar fears Israel must send a strong message to Hamas with a clear victory if it wants to avoid future border breaches.
Many Israeli observers agree on the need for a decisive victory but warn this conflict could be a protracted one. “This is not going to be a short affair. Israel may be facing months of combat. [And it] is going to get more intense before the situation comes to equilibrium,” says David Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy in Jerusalem.
How will Israel respond? Israel has launched airstrikes and is expected to begin a ground incursion into Gaza in the next 24 to 48 hours. But Hamas’s taking of civilian hostages poses a tactical challenge. This is the first time a large number of Israeli citizens have been kidnapped.
Eurasia Group expert Ayham Kamel says Israel's military and political leaders “will be operating with competing priorities, punishing Hamas and ensuring that the hostages taken by the group are not killed. Given the intelligence failures so far, Israel will be faced with additional challenges in identifying the location of the hostages.”
Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Maj. Doron Spielman has said Israel will “do anything” to free and return hostages taken into Gaza.
Weinberg doesn’t believe the hostages will significantly impact retaliatory decision-making. They “won’t change the calculus at all,” he says, adding that “Israel will have to defend itself and crush Hamas no matter whether there are 10 or 100 or 200 Israelis squirreled away in underground terrorist tunnels.”
But the scale of Israel’s response may depend on yet another factor: Hezbollah. Lebanon’s Iranian-backed militant group has warned that “it could get more directly involved from Lebanon if Israel goes into Gaza in force,” says Eurasia Group expert Gregory Brew.
Israeli soldiers on a tank are seen near the Israel-Gaza border on Monday, Oct. 9, 2023.
Israel orders 'complete siege' of Gaza
A day after Hamas launched a deadly multipronged assault on Israel, the Israeli cabinet on Sunday officially declared a state of war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed retaliation for the attacks and warned of “a long and difficult war” ahead.
On Monday, Israel ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying, “There is no electricity, there is no food, there is no water, there is no fuel.”
Israeli tanks and drones are guarding openings in the Gaza border fence to prevent further incursions, and the Israeli Defense Force says it has regained control of the border towns but cautioned that Hamas militants may still be in the region. Fifteen of 24 border communities have been evacuated, and Israel expects the remainder to be cleared today.
Some 100,000 reserve troops have been amassed near the border, and Israeli forces are expected to enter Gaza within 24 to 48 hours. Defenses are also being ramped up in the north along the border with Lebanon.
So far, more than 700 Israelis have been killed, and more than 2,200 have been wounded. A state of emergency has been called, and some 300,000 military reservists have been called up amid a mass mobilization.
There are reports that more than 100 Israelis – including women, children, soldiers, and elderly people – have been kidnapped. Many have reportedly been taken to Gaza.
In Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry reports that more than 400 Palestinians have died and 2,200 have been wounded. The toll includes 20 dead and 121 wounded children.