Israel is reeling from an unbearable tragedy. But does it change anything?
Does Israel’s government withstand the crisis, and how does it affect the U.S.-Israel relationship?
Israelis attend a rally calling for the release of Israelis held kidnapped by Hamas terrorists in Gaza outside the Defense Ministry Headquarters in Tel Aviv, Sept. 1, 2024. (Itai Ron/Flash90)
(JTA) — Minutes after the announcement that the bodies of six hostages had been found in the Gaza Strip, the main organization of hostage families announced that it would “stop” the country in protest.
On Sunday night, tens of thousands of people heeded that call. The country’s main labor federation called a general strike, shuttering businesses and schools nationwide.
Earlier in the day, for the first time since Oct. 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for not rescuing hostages, even as he blamed Hamas for the deadlock in negotiations. And President Joe Biden said he was more determined than ever to reach a deal.
The events of Saturday and Sunday, which have brought Israel to a halt and raised its political acrimony to new heights, prompted a question: Would the tragedy of the six hostages’ deaths become an inflection point in Israel’s war with Hamas, nearly a year after it began?
Israeli political experts said they were not ready to predict that the crisis is about to shift direction. Netanyahu is too steadfast in his resistance to further compromise to reach a ceasefire for hostages deal, they said. And the current political seasons in Israel and the United States are too volatile to say anything with certainty, they added.
Still, the experts saw signs of change. Here’s a look at three areas that might see shifts in the coming weeks.
Does Israel’s government withstand the crisis?
Netanyahu’s right-wing government has endured since Oct. 7, when Hamas raided the country, a fact that seemed improbable to many in the days following Hamas’ attack. The parliamentary opposition, and crowds of thousands of weekly protesters, have relentlessly decried the monumental failure of military intelligence and preparedness that allowed the terror group to inflict the massacre on Israel which saw — 1,200 people killed and more than 250 abducted.
Still, Netanyahu maintains a solid majority of 64 out of 120 seats in Israel’s Knesset, which has so far protected him from any challenges to his leadership. That may continue despite the current upheaval.
“The demonstrations really don’t change the political situation,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a public opinion analyst and a fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.
Gilad Erdan, a former ambassador to the United Nations and to Washington who is close to Netanyahu, told Fox News that the killings, though to have been perpetrated by Hamas in recent days, actually helped the prime minister’s case for resisting a ceasefire under the terms currently on the table.
“A ceasefire is a word that sounds positive, but a ceasefire means Hamas can survive and get a free pass after what they have done,” he said. “And that would be a terrible mistake.”
Nimrod Novik, a former adviser to Shimon Peres, the late center-left prime minister and president, said Oct. 7 had not moved the public as much as he expected; more people had turned out to protest Netanyahu’s planned overhaul of the courts in the months before the war than have turned out until now to demand a ceasefire.
“I was wrong in assuming that after Oct. 7 and a government that proved MIA in the ensuing months, we’re going to have more [protests] in 2024 than in 2023. And it did not materialize,” said Novik, the Israel fellow at the Israel Policy Forum, a group that advocates for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Gayil Talshir, a professor of political science at Hebrew University, said the burdens that Israelis have borne since Oct. 7 — the massive call-ups to the military reserves, the tens of thousands of civilians still evacuated from their homes on Israel’s borders with Gaza and Lebanon — inhibited protest.
Nonetheless, this moment was different, the analysts said.
The murder of six hostages who were alive until hours before their would-be rescuers arrived, coming just over a day after the cabinet rejected a ceasefire deal that did not include a heavy Israeli military presence on the Gaza-Egypt border, where weapons had been smuggled to Hamas, made the crisis real for Israelis, Talshir said.
“This was the crisis, the breaking point,” she said. “What happened yesterday was in a way, the reification of where Netanyahu is actually leading. That combination [of the cabinet vote and the news of the murders] struck a chord in the Israeli heart, which was very hard to do before.”
Scheindlin said the announcement of the countrywide strike on Monday by the national trade union federation, the Histadrut, could be a game-changer.
“The only thing that has a chance of changing the political situation is material pressure,” she said. “So the Histadrut is a big deal.”
She was watching WhatsApp groups she belonged to, a popular medium for organizing activism and sharing information in Israel, to see which municipalities would join the strike. So far, Jewish settlements in the West Bank whose residents tend to support Netanyahu were resisting, which could ease some of the pressure on the prime minister, reassuring him that his base remains intact.
But the anger at Netanyahu crosses party lines to some extent. Novik noted that the Histadrut is led by members of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, who have so far been reluctant to undermine him.
“The fact that over the last 12 hours, they changed their mind and removed their objection, may suggest that something more comprehensive is in store,” he said.
Talshir said the direct political consequences of the past two days would not be immediate because the Knesset is on a break until late October, after the High Holidays.
As pressure mounts, Yoav Gallant, the defense minister who reportedly argued fervently for accepting the latest deal last Thursday, and repeated that call on Sunday, might be able round up enough members of the coalition to threaten to walk out, Talshir said.
So far, far-right members of the coalition such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have opposed a ceasefire, giving Netanyahu an incentive to hang tough. A politically moderate insurgency by Gallant could topple the government or at least get Netanyahu to change course.
“Who we have to watch is the more moderate security-oriented right wing in Israel, which is with the rest of the center and the left and all the families of the hostages out there in the streets,” she said.
But Eytan Gilboa, the director of the Center for International Communication at Bar-Ilan University, said he was already seeing hints that Netanyahu was not going to budge and was in fact doubling down, with attacks from Netanyahu backers saying the strikers were giving succor to Hamas boss Yahiyeh Sinwar, Israel’s foremost public enemy.
“The public relations machinery of Netanyahu is going to work,” Gilboa said. “He is producing talking points to his followers, and I’ve already seen some of them, they are accusing the demonstrators as well of helping Sinwar.”
How does the discovery of the hostages affect the war?
Erdan, the former ambassador, said Israel was not ready to end the war.
“It only strengthens our commitment to continue until we eradicate Hamas totally,” he told Fox. “We should win this war. We shouldn’t end this war. Ending this war now means that we allow Hamas to survive.”
Novik said that as long as the decision makers — Netanyahu and Sinwar — remained in place, there was little sign that anything would change tactically. Netanyahu wants to crush Hamas, and Sinwar is angling for his and his organization’s survival.
“It’s no longer secret that Israel’s security establishment are convinced that even if it were possible to square the circle with some compromise on the Philadelphi route,” the strip of land on the Egypt-Gaza border that Netanyahu is insisting the Israeli military control, Netanyahu “would come up with a new change in the formula,” he said.
A game-changer could be the departure of Gallant, rather than Netanyahu, though what that might portend is not certain, said Gilboa. Gallant has focused his attention on the crisis on the northern border in recent weeks and has argued for shifting resources from Gaza.
Netanyahu has resisted firing Gallant, Gilboa said, wary of the protests that ensued the last time he tried to do so, when the two men broke publicly over the 2023 judicial crisis.
“Now the demonstrations are taking place anyway, Netanyahu might just do it,” Gilboa said about firing Gallant. “He might think this is an opportunity for him, but it might be a greater problem to deal with. If he replaces the minister of defense, I think it’s going to inject more energy into the demonstrations.”
How does this affect the U.S.-Israel relationship?
Erdan said the discovery of the bodies should ease Biden administration pressure on Israel to take a deal.
“The international community, including the American administration, applied more and more pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire,” he told Fox. “This is the time for the international community, for the administration in America to understand that no more pressure should be applied on Israel. We should encourage the Israeli government to continue to increase the pressure on Hamas.”
Biden said he was more dedicated than ever to bringing about a deal. “We will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages,” he said in a statement.
Novik said he did not expect Biden to substantially pressure Israel while his vice president, Kamala Harris, is in a close race for the presidency with Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“When he has to balance the needs of the Harris campaign with the U.S. national security interests at this moment, it’s not an easy balance, right?” Novik said. “So things that he might be able to do on Nov. 6 are not as easy to do today.”
Still, Novik said that Biden could leverage Israeli outrage to make clear that Netanyahu was as responsible as Hamas, if not more so, for frustrating a deal. He recommended, “Tell the Israeli public the truth, ‘Your prime minister is playing games with the terms of the deal.’”
Talshir said Netanyahu was likely watching the U.S. election as well and would not make any strategic decisions until after the vote on Nov. 5.
“Netanyahu will try to drag it on until the election in the U.S., because he will have different tactics should Harris be elected or Trump,” she said.
Dragging the war out that long could backfire, she said. “I don’t think that it’s going to work for him,” she said. If he maintains the status quo that long, she predicted, “I think the Israeli government is going to collapse.”
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