Two years of war, fear and chaos have not clarified the political situation in Israel, which remains as confusing as it has been since 2019. The country that had to go to the polls up to five times in just over three years remains completely divided, with a figure that emerges above all both for its support and for its detractors: the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to the survey published this weekend by the Jerusalem PostNetanyahu and Likud would be the most voted again, with a representation in the 25 -seat assembly over 120 possible. There are seven less than in the last 2022 elections, but just three less than in the last survey published before the massacre of October 7, 2023.
In other words, despite the enormous doubts about the management of the incident itself, the undoubted security failures and the chaotic response, which has served to isolate your country diplomatically without even achieving any of its objectives, Netanyahu resists.
Now, it is a nuanced resistance. His management of the hostage crisis has been hard criticized on both sides of the political spectrum, not obtaining in two years a total agreement that would release all the kidnapped or undertake a definitive military intervention that will tear them out of the grilles of the terrorists.
That continuous moving in improvisation, without a definite plan or a strategy worthy of that name, is what has prevented him from consecrating himself as leader of a united country.
In fact, he has seen how extremists have eaten ground on his right. So much Avigdor Lieberman as Itamar Ben True They shoot in the surveys. As in so many places, before the copy, people stay with the original.
Lieberman and Ben Gvir support the release of hostages, of course, but their number one objective is the annexation of Gaza and the West Bank and the immediate legalization of the multiple irregular settlements that have been built in Palestinian territory.
In such a polarized scenario, a good part of the Likud voters have decided to embrace anti-Arab positions and nationalists until the last consequences.
Naphtali Bennett, great beneficiary of the crisis
That said, the main problem for Netanyahu comes on his left. If on October 7, 2023, the alternative was called Benny Gantzthe general who was head of the FDI, two years later he is called Bennett of the oilformer Prime Minister of Israel between June 2021 and June 2022.
Although Israel is not a presidential country, sometimes it seems. The names are much more important than the parties or coalitions, which arrive and disappear. Gantz will probably harm his entry into the national unity government after the attacks and his presence in the war cabinet next to Yoav they can and to Netanyahu himself.
The boom of Bennett, meanwhile, is due to a certain air of stability within the current chaos, to its dialogue position with respect to Gaza and, above all, to its proximity to the movements in favor of the release of hostages.
It is impossible to overestimate the trauma that Israeli society has lived and lives even after the kidnappings of October 7. Therefore, the return of all the kidnapped, both living and dead, to the Hebrew land, is essential to build the future.
This same weekend, the streets of the main Israeli cities were filled with protesters who demanded the Government to accept Trump’s plan and immediately produced the return of the hostages.
These manifestations have been repeated over these two years and have eroded the credibility of Netanyahu and its political force. There has been no need to accuse him of delaying the return of the kidnapped and the very end of the war to avoid facing his internal reality: an increasingly extremist coalition and with fewer supports, a permanent contentious with the Supreme Court, and various causes for pending corruption.
A peace almost at any price
The desire for peace is the only truly transversal in Israeli society. According to the aforementioned survey of the Jerusalem Postup to 66% of citizens support Trump’s plan, compared to 11% opposed.
Even among the voters of the right -wing coalition in the government, the numbers are similar: 61% support the conditions, although they contemplate a scenario favorable to a future Palestinian state, while only 14% oppose frontally.
It is no accident that between 20 and 25% of Israelis in general and right -wing voters in particular do not rule on the US Peace Plan.
It is the expression of the internal tension that the country has lived during these two years and that has paralyzed any negotiating attempt: on the one hand, as it has been clear, the vast majority of the Israelis want peace, the return of the hostages and the return to normal; On the other hand, although it is difficult to oppose Trump’s plan, they also find it hard to accept it for a territorial issue.
Both ultra -orthodox and ultra -nationalist parties and Netanyahu themselves refuse to create a Palestinian state. That goes against what is signed in Oslo, against the official position of the international community through the UN … and against the United States’s own position and the Trump administration.
Obviously, the idea of a concentration government that governs in Gaza with Arab investment and makes the strip a prosperous and sustainable place for itself is the prelude to its own state for the Palestinians. To many Israelis, that idea gives them panic.
Netanyahu knows it and, therefore, although he has accepted Trump’s plan before the immense pressures of the White House, he intuits that his implementation until the last consequences can mean his political end.
The negotiations in Egypt began this Monday with more optimism than other times, but with the same problem: neither Hamas wants to stop being a political actor in Gaza, nor the Israeli government wants a prosperous gaza that can lead to an Arab state. Two years have not enough to change those departure positions and only Trump’s tenacity, Steve Witkoff y Jared Kushner You can work the miracle.