Hezbollah assassinations and airstrikes have boosted Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity. Here’s what it means

Benjamin Netanyahu is becoming more popular in Israel.

The prime minister’s ratings were down in the dumps after the October 7 attack by Hamas.

Netanyahu, who had positioned himself as the man who kept Israelis safe, was widely thought to have taken his eye off the ball.

But now, around one year later, things seem to be changing.

Let’s take a closer look:

Netanyahu returns to power

Netanyahu returned to power in December 2022 at the helm of the most right-wing Israeli government ever.

This after his Likud Party won just 32 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.

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The swearing-in ceremony capped a remarkable comeback for Netanyahu, who was ousted in 2021 after 12 straight years in power.

Netanyahu had to make a string of concessions and tie up with a number of far-right parties to gain power for a record sixth time.

Netanyahu was leading an alliance of religious and far-right parties that had vowed to prioritise settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, extend massive subsidies to his ultra-Orthodox allies and push for sweeping reform of the judicial system.

The plans had sparked an uproar in Israeli society, prompting criticism from the military, LGBTQ rights groups, the business community and others, and raised concerns abroad.

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In a stormy parliamentary session before his swearing in, the combative Netanyahu took aim at his critics, accusing the opposition of trying to scare the public.

“I hear the constant cries of the opposition about the end of the country and democracy,” Netanyahu said from the podium. “Opposition members: to lose in elections is not the end of democracy, this is the essence of democracy.”

His speech was interrupted repeatedly by boos and jeers from his opponents, who chanted “weak, weak” — an apparent reference to the numerous concessions he made to his new governing partners.

The attack that changed everything

Then, the Hamas attack occurred on October 7, 2023.

Backed by a barrage of rockets, Hamas militants stormed from the blockaded Gaza Strip into nearby Israeli towns, killing dozens and abducting others in an unprecedented surprise attack during a major Jewish holiday.

Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including towns and other communities as far as 24 kilometers from the Gaza border. In some places they gunned down civilians and soldiers as Israel’s military scrambled to muster a response.

Israeli media, citing rescue service officials, said at least 250 people were killed and 1,500 wounded in the attack, making it the deadliest in Israel in decades.

The strength, sophistication and timing of the Saturday morning attack shocked Israelis. Hamas fighters used explosives to break through the border fence enclosing Gaza, then crossed with motorcycles, pickup trucks, paragliders and speed boats on the coast.

The Hamas incursion on Simchat Torah, a normally joyous day when Jews complete the annual cycle of reading the Torah scroll, revived painful memories of the 1973 Mideast war practically 50 years to the day, in which Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, aiming to take back Israeli-occupied territories.

Comparisons to one of the most traumatic moments in Israeli history sharpened criticism of Netanyahu and his far-right allies, who had campaigned on more aggressive action against threats from Gaza.

Political commentators lambasted the government and military over its failure to anticipate what a Hamas attack unseen in its level of planning and coordination.

The assault left the public pointing the finger at those in power.

Netanyahu, who declared Israel to be at war, had said the military will use all of its strength to destroy Hamas’ capabilities. But he warned, “This war will take time. It will be difficult.”

“All the places that Hamas hides in, operates from, we will turn them into ruins,” he vowed.

But his inability to secure the release of the hostages taken by Hamas or even chart out a future for Israel beyond ‘wiping out Hamas’ led many to predict that the Netanyahu government was careening towards its demise.

A string of polls taken after the attacks showed Netanyahu’s popularity waning even further and that if elections were held, the Likud Party would further slip to 17 seats, as per CNN.

But nothing of the sort happened.

Bounce back

Instead, by August 2024, Netanyahu’s popularity had begun to somewhat bounce back.

By now, the Gaza war was in full swing and violence was continuing to escalate in the occupied West Bank.

Then, in September, Israel carried out a string of assassinations of Hezbollah leaders in a series of airstrikes on Lebanon.

In just over a week, intensified Israeli strikes in Lebanon killed seven high-ranking commanders and officials from the powerful Hezbollah militant group, including the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

The move left Lebanon and much of the Mideast in shock as Israeli officials celebrated major military and intelligence breakthroughs.

Hezbollah had opened a front to support its ally Hamas in the Gaza Strip a day after the Palestinian group’s surprise attack into southern Israel.

This came after pagers used by hundreds of Hezbollah members exploded almost simultaneously in parts of Lebanon as well as Syria.

The attack left over a dozen dead and thousands wounded – and left Hezbollah operationally degraded and psychologically scarred.

Even in the months before the recent escalation of the war with Hezbollah, Israel’s military had targeted top commanders, most notably Fuad Shukur in late July, hours before an explosion in Iran widely blamed on Israel killed the leader of the Palestinian Hamas militant group Ismail Haniyeh.

All of this has led to Netanyahu reviving his popularity at least somewhat.

This despite over 100 hostages still in Hamas’ hands.

Today, a new poll from Israel’s Channel 12 shows Netanyahu with a 38 per cent approval rating.

The poll showed that the Likud, were elections held today, would emerge as Israel’s single-largest party with 25 seats.

However, the poll also showed that the current coalition would get 49 seats and the Opposition parties would get 66 seats and thus be able to form a new government.

The Channel 12 poll also shows that Yair Lapid, the Opposition leader, has the support of 27 per cent of those polled.

What do experts say?

Experts say that the conflict seems to be helping Netanyahu.

“The regional confrontations are good for Netanyahu,” veteran pollster and analyst Dahlia Scheindlin told CNN. “They seem quite clearly to be the contributing factor to his recovery.”

Scheindlin also added that Israel’s strikes in Lebanon have resonated with the public.

“It’s clear enemies of Israel,” she said. “There’s no ambiguity around this question of occupation, et cetera.”

She also said it is hard to separate Netanyahu’s personal ambition of staying in power with the politically stated goal of allowing Israelis to return to the border areas with Lebanon.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if part of one of his considerations was so that Israelis feel like – after a year of having been through this horrible shock and trauma and surprise – that they have responded,” Scheindlin added. “That makes Israelis feel that they have a kind of catharsis, a sort of closure.”

Any hopes that Netanyahu would be toppled also received a blow with his rival Gideon Saar joining the Israeli government.

“When I ordered the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, we all knew that an entire nation was behind this decision,” Netanyahu said Sunday evening as per CNN. “The cohesion of the ranks is a necessary condition for us to stand firm in these testing days, and for us to achieve the goals we have set.”

“Saar’s decision to join the government is certainly a painful blow to a large number of Israelis who think that Netanyahu needs to go, and not just because he is being tried on criminal charges, and not just because he is the most corrupt, hedonistic and lying prime minister Israel has ever had,” Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Sima Kadmon told BBC.

She added that Saar’s decision “will stabilise and boost the worst government ever to have served in Israel, so much so that the original date of the next elections, October 2026, now appears to be a realistic date.”

But no one can say with any confidence as to what happens next.

“There’s no real joy in Israel now,” Scheindlin told CNN. “Even a sense of satisfaction for the moment or even a momentary euphoria – nothing’s going to take away the reality that this is a very somber time, especially because of the hostages.”

Others think this is a temporary high.

Anshel Pfeffer, who wrote a biography of the prime minister, told The National he thinks this is a momentary boost “because he’s not getting away from any of [Israel’s] core problems”.

“The war in Gaza isn’t ending and the war in Lebanon may well turn out to be a quagmire despite this initial success. The bigger issue is that Israelis still blame [Netanyahu] for October 7 and Israel being so divided before it. He’s going to try to frame [the assassination] in a kind of Churchillian narrative, as if we went through this period of blood, sweat and tears but now we’re coming out on top,” he added.

“I don’t think in the long run this will save his career and won’t salvage his historic record, not least because even though Netanyahu wants to take credit for what happened over the last few days, a lot of people realise it’s not because of Netanyahu – he barely gave the OK for these operations – it’s actually the much maligned intelligence, security and [military] services. Ultimately, I think Israelis will credit them rather than Netanyahu.”

They also noted that elections in Israel are not due for another two years.

“If elections were held today, Netanyahu and his allies would be unable to form a government. But chances of early elections are slim: The current coalition has little interest in calling for new elections, and the majority it enjoys in parliament prevents the opposition from forcing one. That means any attempt to set an early election would need support from at least some members of the coalition,” Shai P, Ginsburg, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University, wrote in The Conversation.

“I believe only an extraordinary event could unseat Netanyahu: a general and unlimited strike supported not only by the Histadrut, which represents the majority of Israel’s labor organizations, but also by employers and the industrial and financial sector as a whole; a de facto or de jure military coup with the backing of all heads of Israel’s military, security and intelligence branches; or a military and financial embargo on Israel. Given the extraordinary nature of these events, they are very unlikely.”

With inputs from agencies