Netanyahu Fights for His Political Survival
TEL AVIV—Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a rare apology Sunday that inadvertently framed the political crisis that has engulfed him. A few hours earlier, facing mounting criticism for the Hamas attacks that killed 1,400 Israelis, he publicly blamed the security failures on Israel’s defense and intelligence services. He hadn’t been warned of Hamas’s intention to start a war, he wrote in a tweet on X, saying that defense and intelligence officials had “assessed that Hamas was deterred." Soon after, he deleted the tweet and apologized.
The unusual reversal illustrates Netanyahu’s increasingly fraught position. Over 35 years in politics, he has cultivated an image as a security hawk tough on Palestinian violence and ready to face down the threat of a nuclear Iran. That image shattered Oct.
7 when more than a thousand Hamas militants entered Israel in what many Israelis are calling the worst security and intelligence failure in its 75-year history. Now he faces a maddening balancing act that requires him to explain the country’s security failures; mount a war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip; seek to return hostages held by the Islamist group; and keep his coalition together amid growing criticism for the Oct. 7 attacks.
Even if Israel wins the war, it may not save his political career. Unlike many wartime leaders, Netanyahu is struggling to rally the public to his side. Israelis have blamed him in eulogies for the dead; his ministers have been shouted out of hospitals and pictures have been published of red paint smeared on the headquarters of his Likud party to look like blood.
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