As the war against Hamas enters its third month, Israel's prime minister faces the wrath of citizens whose lives will never be the same again.
Benyamin Netanyahu has a residence on a leafy Jerusalem street, next to a sushi restaurant, a winery bar and bomb shelter. But as the war against Hamas enters its third month, Israel's prime minister is rarely home: Instead, he divides his time between the Knesset and Hakiria, or Campus, the Tel Aviv neighborhood where the military is headquartered.
TSN.ua offers you an adaptation of The Telegraph's material, the author of which is trying to figure out what game Netanyahu is playing.
Global pressure
Bibi – a childhood nickname he still hasn't gotten rid of – won six elections. He served as Prime Minister for a total of 16 years, and intends to remain there for even longer.
In his entire tenure as Israel's leader, Netanyahu, 74, has never wielded more power. It is he, a former special forces soldier, who will decide how far Israel pushes the next phase of its war into Gaza. He will be the one to announce the completion of the deal. And, if he stays in this position long enough, he will decide what the war will look like the day after tomorrow.
“He's in control,” says Richard Pater, director of the British Israel Center for Communications and Research. “He knows the worst thing you can do in politics is take your hands off the wheel.”
Israel claims to have killed a total of 5,000 Hamas fighters from the group's 30,000-strong armed wing. But the top executives of the October 7 deal remain alive.
Meanwhile, global pressure is mounting over the Palestinian death toll, which now stands at 18,000, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
The extent to which Netanyahu heeds British and American calls to preserve civilian life depends in part on the temperature of national politics.
Even before the war began, Netanyahu was already on the fringes, having become prime minister thanks to an agreement with the Israeli right that led to the creation of a fragmented coalition.
He was – still is – embroiled in a decades-long corruption trial. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets earlier this year to protest judicial reforms that many said gave the government too much power over the country's highest court.
“It happened before his eyes”
When Hamas terrorists breached the border on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages, many blamed the security failure that had occurred during Netanyahu's rule.
“We are disappointed that he allowed this to happen and that it happened under his leadership,” said Dalia Scheindlin, a political strategist and public opinion expert at the Century Foundation, a think tank in Tel Aviv. “He is responsible for being the leader when it happened.”
Wartime leaders often benefit from the public rallying around the flag. Netanyahu is still viewed with skepticism, but many citizens seem willing to put their feelings aside until the worst of the fighting is over.
“He must continue to make Hamas disappear,” said Avram Levy, 73, a fruit seller at Jerusalem's central market. “If even one Hamas guy appears without legs and without a right arm, but makes a victory sign with his left hand, we have lost.”
Netanyahu “has the character of a strong leader,” said Levy, whose 42-year-old son is at war. “It doesn’t break,” the man added.
Above all, many Israelis believe it is necessary to prevent another attack like the one that occurred on October 7th.
Eighty-seven percent of Jewish Israelis said they support resuming fighting after the recent ceasefire, according to a poll of 600 people released last week by the Israel Democracy Institute.
In contrast, only about 20 percent of Arab Israeli respondents supported continued fighting.
“We cannot stop the operation,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said this week. “We cannot stop for the security of Israel, the region and the world.”
“Our soldiers are expanding the ground operation against Hamas throughout the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu said Thursday, December 7, as families across Israel gathered to light their first Hanukkah candles.
On November 18, the families of the hostages arrived at the gates of Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem after marching from Tel Aviv to demand that he do more to bring their loved ones home.
His relationship with these citizens, the most vulnerable in the country, was not easy. Their demands to prioritize the fate of their family members over comparison with the land of Gaza are not as easily ignored as external calls for abstinence.
“I used to want him to leave, now I want it even more”
Many of those kidnapped and killed that October day came from left-wing kibbutzim that were already deeply opposed to Netanyahu's rule.
“I used to want him to go away, now I want it even more,” said Ayelet Hakim, 55, a resident of Kibbutz Beeri, where more than 100 people were killed on October 7.
She spent 17 hours that day with her husband and two children, ages 4 and 11, hiding in a safe room as attackers sealed off their home. She sent what she thought would be her last text message to her 29-year-old son, reminding him to be careful.
While the family survived, her sister, 57-year-old Raz Ben-Ami, was captured by Hamas.
She was released in a recent hostage exchange after 54 days in custody. But her husband, Ohad Ben-Ami, remains among the 137 hostages still in captivity.
After Raz's release, she immediately began a fierce campaign for her husband's freedom.
But she was so infuriated by the government's inaction that she left a group meeting between the families of the hostages and Netanyahu last Wednesday, December 6, Hakim said.
Netanyahu should “give the keys to someone else and let someone else handle it,” Hakim said from a hotel in Ein Bokek, the Dead Sea resort town where Be'eri residents live since the attack.
After the release of the hostages, many victims of Hamas atrocities on kibbutzim agree with Netanyahu's overarching desire to rewrite the entire nature of the Gaza Strip.
Hakim admits that there may be another way forward other than war.
“I think the Palestinians and I, [we] are the same now; We’re both not safe,” she says. “Our life will be better if there is no Hamas—that’s what I want.” Hamas is a terrorist group that must be eliminated. I want Hamas to disappear from this world so that the Palestinians can live safely in Gaza, just as I want to live safely in Be'eri.”
45-year-old Miriam Gad-Messika, also a Be'eri resident, said she will feel safe once the Israeli military “finishes what they started – so that we can see the sea, the shore,” referring to the coastline along Gaza – the view from her house, blocked by the sector. “There may be no more Gaza.”
Read the leading news of the day:
Palestinians have many countries that can accept them,” she said. Israel is so small that if they don't want to live with us, if they don't want to live in peace with us, let them go! They shouldn't be here.
Perhaps those who would most like to see Netanyahu resign are the two million Palestinians living in Gaza, most of whom are struggling to survive amid brutal clashes between Israeli soldiers and militants Hamas.
For them, Palestinian land has been illegally occupied for 75 years – since Israel declared independence, which led to the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, which, according to some estimates, led to forced displacement of a million people from their homes.
Today in Gaza many Palestinians have nowhere to go. According to the United Nations, the war displaced about 80 percent of the population.
Deafening bombs are now falling on Gaza's major cities, many of them heading south, after the first phase of the operation leveled much of the north.
Debris, dirt and dust are all that remain of what were once bakeries and houses. The floors of abandoned hospitals are covered with dried blood, as residents told The Telegraph.
Food, fuel and water are scarce and disease is rampant, humanitarian organizations warn. Dozens of people are buried in mass graves.
“I try not to look my children in the eye”
“I try not to look my children in the eyes,” said Sami Abu Salem, 52, a father of four from central Gaza who is forced to sleep on the streets without shelter. “They look at me with strong eyes. I feel like they are telling me: “Please do something for us, we are cold, we are hungry.”
Like Abu Salem, Ummah Osama Haneiah, a mother of three, has moved several times since the start of the war and now lives in the southern city of Khan Yunis, where Israel is fighting heavy battles against Hamas. door to door.
“It’s dangerous to move around here,” Hanea, 34, told The Telegraph. “My three-year-old daughter trembles when there are airstrikes.”
The Israeli military issued an evacuation order requiring Hanei and others to move south to the city of Rafah, on the border between Gaza and Egypt. But having no relatives or friends there, she doubts.
The ideal option would be to return home to northern Gaza, but this is impossible as the war continues.
“During the truce, I tried to find out if my house was in the north,” she says. “But I just couldn’t get any information.”
Her family also cannot afford the 1,000 Israeli shekels needed to buy a tent, although it will not protect against bombs or protect against winter temperatures that drop to 10 degrees below zero at night.
“I'm trapped,” Hanea says.
In the struggle for survival, few in Gaza have time to talk about politics. Fury against Netanyahu's destructive war grows along with death toll.
In Israeli society, regardless of political views, there is a general opinion that the war must first be ended. Then we can return to politics – it's time to hold Netanyahu and the entire government accountable.
If Netanyahu is weighing what to do the day after the war, Israeli voters are also weighing what to do with him.
Boaz Tzidkiyahu, owner of a popular store of the same name in Jerusalem, lost faith in Netanyahu after October 7th. “I no longer support him because of the colossal mess of the war,” the 62-year-old said. He believes that many officials will have to resign.
But why not wait for the right moment? Why should we do this now to show that we hate each other instead of uniting?”.< /p>
Read also:
Related topics:
More news
