Dissension is growing in Israel over the government’s offensive against Gaza and whether it should continue. Several opinion polls show a sharp decline in support for the current war cabinet.
Despite two months of intensive military operations ostensibly targeting Hamas, the occupation army has made no significant breakthroughs towards its stated objectives, namely freeing the hostages, uprooting the Palestinian resistance, and destroying its tunnel networks.
Meanwhile, Israeli losses are mounting, requiring a large and steady influx of arms and ammunition from the US and Israel’s other Western backers. Since the beginning of the war on Gaza, Israel has received 10,000 tons of US ammunition plus a $14 billion emergency aid package from Congress. The UK sent Israel surveillance drones to help with the search for hostages in Gaza. Most military analysts believe the real purpose of the drones is to spy and help Israeli artillery with targeting.
Other signs of the growing opposition in Israel to the Netanyahu government and the way it is prosecuting the war come from present and former officials and politicians. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has called on the prime minister to resign over the government’s poor handling of the war against Hamas. “This government isn’t functioning,” he said in a TV interview in mid-November. “We need change — Netanyahu cannot continue to be prime minister. We cannot allow ourselves to conduct a prolonged campaign with a prime minister that the public has no faith in.”
Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin echoed the call more recently. In an article published on the Israeli Channel 12 news site on 4 December, he wrote, “Netanyahu should resign and go home immediately.” Not only did Netanyahu refuse to take responsibility for the intelligence failure on 7 October, but “he did not feel an ounce of guilt and responsibility [after the attack] or empathise with the families of the victims.”
Netanyahu was “cold in body language, arrogant and evading reality,” he said, adding, “In the coming elections we must elect a new, worthy, humble leadership that loves its people and not itself.”
According to a survey conducted by the Israeli newspaper Maariv in late November, the ruling coalition would “crash” to just 41 seats if elections were held the day the survey was conducted. Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party would win 43 seats compared to its current 12 while Netanyahu’s Likud would lose almost half its seats, plummeting to 18 down from 32 a year ago.
A more recent Maariv poll, published on 8 December, found that 51 per cent of Israelis surveyed believed that Benny Gantz is most suitable for prime minister, while only 31 per cent felt that Benjamin Netanyahu was the most suitable.
Many prominent Jews have censured the Israeli government and its Western supporters for their attempt to exploit anti-semitism to silence criticism of Israel. A recent example is the open letter published by the n+1 literary and cultural online magazine, signed by over a thousand Jewish writers and artists refuting the claim that criticising Israel is anti-semitic. The letter condemned the use of this rhetorical tactic “to shield Israel from accountability, dignify the US’ multibillion-dollar investment in Israel’s military, obscure the deadly reality of occupation, and deny Palestinian sovereignty.”
It continues: “Now, this insidious gagging of free speech is being used to justify Israel’s ongoing military bombardment of Gaza and to silence criticism from the international community. We condemn the recent attacks on Israeli and Palestinian civilians and mourn such harrowing loss of life. In our grief, we are horrified to see the fight against anti-semitism weaponised as a pretext for war crimes with stated genocidal intent.”
The declining support in Israel for the government and for the war on Gaza is probably due to a combination of factors. The increasing numbers of dead among the Israeli army is an important one. As of 8 December, 91 Israeli soldiers were officially reported killed in action in the ground offensive in Gaza. One of the dead is the son of Gadi Eisenkot, former army chief of staff and a member of the current war cabinet.
This brings the number of Israeli military deaths up to 411 since 7 October. However, some sources estimate that the war has claimed thousands of casualties among the Israeli military. In addition, some have been exposed to infectious diseases and around a hundred have sustained serious eye injuries due to the lack of protective goggles. According to Israel’s official broadcaster, ten to fifteen per cent of these injuries have caused blindness in one or both eyes.
A second factor is the anger at the government’s failure to free the hostages. A leaked recording from a meeting between Netanyahu’s war cabinet and the families of the hostages on 5 December revealed the extent of the fury. “You put politics above the return of the kidnapped,” said one woman. Another former abductee complained, “The fact is that I was in a hiding place that was shelled and we had to be smuggled out and we were wounded. That’s besides the helicopter that shot at us on the way to Gaza.” Some of the participants were so angry they walked out of the meeting.
The economic impact of the war is another major factor. Average household purchasing power has declined sharply since the start of the war and the consequent slowdown in the economy. Prices have been driven up further by the recent disruption of food and other supply chains due to the Houthi attacks on Israeli-owned or leased ships in the Red Sea. The real estate market is in a crisis. According to some estimates, new housing sales have fallen by 30 to 90 per cent since the outbreak of the war. Economists have also warned that the slowdown in construction due to a severe labour shortage threatens expensive delays and the possible bankruptcy of construction companies.
The Israeli economy has also been shaken by the drop in tourism and airline companies’ decisions to reduce flights to Israel. According to the Israeli business website, Globes, the frequency of flights taking off or landing at Ben Gurion Airport has fallen by 80 per cent. It adds that this situation is unlikely to change soon. It also reports that “Ryanair, which has the largest aircraft fleet in Europe and is one of the most popular low-cost carriers operating in and out of Ben Gurion Airport, is to cancel all its flights to and from Israel in January.”
If tension and polarisation have been the central theme of Israeli domestic politics since the beginning of the year, the war has not resolved this.
Netanyahu’s conduct of the war appears to have aggravated the trend, and opposition to the war and to his government will only increase as the economy continues to deteriorate and the casualty toll mounts. While the Palestinian resistance’s rockets continue to defy the Israeli occupation’s war machine, Israeli political leadership is feeling the strains on the home front as never before.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 December, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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