Whatever unfolds in Gaza war, judgment day looms for Netanyahu
The shock Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas gunmen has rallied Israelis to one another.
But there is little love shown for a government being widely accused of dropping the country's guard and engulfing it in a Gaza war that is rattling the region.
Whatever ensues, a day of judgment looms for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after a record-long career of political comebacks.
Public fury over some 1,300 Israeli fatalities has been further fuelled by Netanyahu's signature self-styling as a Churchillian strategist who foresaw national-security threats.
Another backdrop is social polarisation this year over his religious-nationalist coalition's judicial overhaul drive, which triggered walkouts by some military reservists and raised doubts — now borne out in blood, some argue — about combat-readiness.
«October 2023 Debacle» read a headline in top-selling daily Yedioth Ahronoth, language meant to recall Israel's failure to anticipate a twin Egyptian and Syrian offensive in October 1973, which eventually led then-Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign.
That ouster put paid to the hegemony of Meir's centre-left Labour party. Amotz Asa-El, research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, predicted a similar fate for Netanyahu and his long-dominant, conservative Likud party.
«It doesn't matter if there's a commission of inquiry or not, or whether or not he admits fault. All that matters is what 'middle Israelis' think — which is that this is a fiasco and that the prime minister is responsible,» Asa-El told Reuters.
«He will go, and his entire establishment along with him.»
An opinion poll in Maariv newspaper found that 21% of Israelis want Netanyahu to remain prime minister after the war.
