The real reason Netanyahu won’t end the Gaza war

This weekend, Israeli soldiers in Gaza discovered the bodies of six hostages executed by Hamas. The response was an outpouring of protests: Israelis flooding the streets to call for a ceasefire that would bring all hostages back and end the war, a demand that a majority of Israelis support. The Histadrut, Israel’s national labor union, called a (swiftly ended) general strike.

The response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to double down on war. In a Monday night press conference, he insisted that any ceasefire would depend on Israeli control over a stretch of territory in southwestern Gaza called the Philadelphi Corridor — something Hamas is not prepared to give. Netanyahu’s presser was so belligerent, in fact, that it may have single-handedly torpedoed ongoing ceasefire talks.

It’s clear that the Israeli public has no faith in Netanyahu’s handling of the war: Roughly 70 percent believe he should resign his position. Yet despite ongoing protests, it’s equally clear that the prime minister will not be changing course voluntarily. 

And it looks like he’ll likely get away with it, at least for now. 

His government has weathered dismal polling on its war effort, as well as sporadic protests, since the war began last October. And yet, as with past demonstration flare-ups, there has been no evidence that this weekend’s events have brought his government to the brink of collapse. How can this be?

The answer is brute power politics. The 2022 election gave right-wing parties a clear majority in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), allowing Netanyahu to build the most far-right government in Israeli history. Though this coalition has since become extremely unpopular, there’s no way for voters to kick it out on their own. 

The government could only collapse if it faces defections from inside the governing coalition. But at present, the greatest threat to Netanyahu’s coalition comes from his extreme right flank, which wants him to continue the war at all costs. And for that reason, he seems intent on doing so.

It’s not impossible that other cracks in the government begin to show. There are certainly signs of stress, and escalating mass publication could exacerbate them. But as of right now, the situation looks bleak. The Israeli public wants to end the killing in Gaza, but their government won’t let them.

Why Netanyahu’s coalition has been so durable

In Israel’s parliamentary system, governments are formed by legislative majorities; Netanyahu’s government currently commands 64 out of the 120 seats in the Knesset. 

Of those 64 seats, half come from Netanyahu’s own right-wing Likud party. Twenty-five seats come from ultra-Orthodox parties, and the remaining seven belong to the even further right Religious Zionism faction.

These parties don’t agree on everything, but it’s hard to see any of them rebelling against the government to push for a ceasefire deal.

Likud, once Israel’s relatively normal center-right party, is now a hollowed-out vehicle for Netanyahu’s ambitions. Its parliamentary ranks are mostly made up of the prime minister’s toadies. Yoav Gallant, the current defense minister, is an exception; he has bitterly and publicly feuded with Netanyahu over the prime minister’s incompetent handling of the war. Indeed, Gallant’s support is a major reason why the 2023 mass protests successfully blocked Netanyahu’s master plan to seize control of Israel’s court system.

But those protests were bigger and more disruptive than the current anti-war demonstrations. And so far, there is little evidence that Gallant has enough supporters inside the government to fuel a wave of defections that might topple the government.

The religious parties in Netanyahu’s coalition care less about the war itself than they do preserving the rights and privileges of the ultra-Orthodox community. Foremost among these priorities is fighting a recent Supreme Court ruling that ends the community’s exemption from Israel’s national conscription law, a court order that Netanyahu is slow-walking and that a center-left coalition would almost certainly implement in full.

One ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, has expressed support for a hostage deal. But so far, there is no indication that Shas cares enough about the plight of the hostages to threaten to topple the government over it. 

Religious Zionism, by contrast, cares deeply about the war — and they want it to continue. Their party’s raison d’être is expanding Israeli Jewish control over all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and the war has proven an extraordinary boon to this cause. The party’s radical leaders, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have repeatedly threatened to quit the coalition if Netanyahu strikes any kind of long-term ceasefire deal. 

Netanyahu cares very deeply about maintaining his grip on power: it’s the closest thing to a literal get-out-of-jail-free card that a prime minister staring down criminal conviction could have. This means that he cares a great deal about the far-right threats to quit his government, and will want to maintain the war as long as he can, absent a major political threat on his other flank.

So far, one hasn’t emerged.

Can the opposition turn mass discontent into political power?

The protest movement, while large, primarily draws from the ranks of the Israeli center and left. As such, it’s thus unlikely to sway parliamentarians from the right-wing coalition parties as long as they keep their core voters. 

“Both these things are true: the government does not enjoy a majority in the polls, but it still holds a sizable base of support,” says Noam Gidron, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Moreover, Gidron says, the fractured Israeli opposition has not yet figured out how to translate its majority public support into a concerted strategy to break Netanyahu’s coalition. 

“The opposition is divided between the centrists, the more leftist wing, and the Arab parties — and they have not figured out how — and perhaps even whether — they should operate together against the government,” he says. Benny Gantz, the leader of the most popular opposition party, seems “reluctant to use all the political power and go in full force against Netanyahu.”

That’s one way things could change: the opposition getting its act together, linking up with the street demonstrations, and trying to force Netanyahu’s hand. You could also imagine Gallant finding a few more Likud defectors, Shas having an attack of conscience, or tensions over the conscription of ultra-Orthodox men boiling over.

But as of right now, none of this appears to be on the horizon.

“For [the government to fall], Israeli political leaders would need common sense, political courage, and a moral backbone. Too clearly, the overwhelming majority have none,” Dahlia Scheindlin, a leading Israel pollster, writes in the Haaretz newspaper.