In one sense, Netanyahu’s unpopularity is exactly what is making him hard to dislodge: the polls in Israel are so bad for the prime minister and his Likud party that even with a difficult coalition, there is no appetite to go to the voters any time soon.
“There is a degree of truth to the idea that he would like to prolong the war for as long as possible in the hope that something will turn up to save him,” Peter Beaumont said. “If the IDF could find and kill [Hamas leaders] Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar, I don’t know if that would be enough, but it is the kind of thing he is hoping for.”
There is no requirement for an election to be held before October 2026. An earlier vote would require the support of a majority of members of the 120-member Knesset, where Likud holds 32 seats and leads a 72-seat governing coalition – so a key question is whether Netanyahu’s partners will decide to abandon him.
That is certainly a strong possibility – “but there’s an unwritten rule about not challenging government during wartime,” Peter said. “Even though they are all politicking, nobody wants to be the one to bring the government down. Everyone wants someone else to jump so that they can benefit, and that’s why things are stuck.”
Despite these caveats, there are very real risks for Netanyahu.
Will the far right abandon him?
Netanyahu’s coalition relies in part on a 14-seat far-right faction to govern. The leading lights of that group, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have opposed any hostage-for-prisoner deal with Hamas – Smotrich recently said the hostages were “not the most important thing” – and argue that Jewish settlers should return to Gaza, with Ben-Gvir saying there is a need to “encourage emigration” by Palestinians living there.
After some Israeli troops were withdrawn from Gaza on Sunday, Ben-Gvir said that “if the prime minister decides to end the war without a large-scale offensive in Rafah to defeat Hamas, he will not have a mandate to continue”.
“It is possible that they could walk away,” Peter said, pointing to their hopes of gaining votes from rightwing Likud supporters in any new election. “But they will never get a seat at the table like they have at the moment. So that militates against collapsing the government.” Smotrich and Ben-Gvir represent different parties, with Smotrich’s currently polling below the minimum threshold for seats at the Knesset: “Israeli politics is notoriously transactional,” Peter said. “Just because they appear to have similar world views, they might not jump the same way in a pinch.”
Netanyahu’s response to Ben-Gvir’s warning over Rafah – to make a swift statement promising that “there is a date” for the offensive, which is such a problem for Israel’s wavering allies in the west – is evidence that “his decision horizon is day to day,” Peter added. “His calculations at the moment are almost always: ‘What do I need to do to keep the coalition going for a little bit longer?’”
Can he resolve the ultra-orthodox conscription crisis?
Two ultra-orthodox, or Haredi, parties hold 18 seats as part of Netanyahu’s coalition. The vast majority of those of serving age in the community they represent are exempt from mandatory military service, a longstanding source of contention in Israeli politics that has been given new urgency by the invasion of Gaza. The supreme court ruled in March that because the government had failed to agree an extension of the exemption before it lapsed, subsidies to ultraorthodox seminaries should be suspended.
This is a major problem for Netanyahu because it divides his coalition: some secular members could withdraw if he tries to restore the status quo, while the Haredi parties are also threatening to collapse the government.
“It should be a dealbreaker for them in theory,” Peter said. “But the reality is that they still obtain huge financial benefit from their role in the coalition, and there is some scepticism over whether this will ever finally force ultraorthodox conscription – this has been an issue that hasn’t been resolved for years. So it isn’t necessarily in their interests to throw their toys out of the pram.”
The respected Haaretz columnist Anshel Pfeffer wrote earlier this month that “enlistment of young Haredi men may yet be the issue that brings down the government, but probably not before the Knesset session ends in late July”.
Will Netanyahu lose support in the war cabinet or his own party?
Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, both centre-right opposition figures in the National Unity party, joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet after 7 October and bolstered the government’s stability. But they have both been highly critical of Netanyahu’s military strategy – Eisenkot has blamed Netanyahu for the 7 October attacks and said that the idea of “absolute victory” is unrealistic, while Gantz recently said that there should be an election in September.
Gantz is now the most popular politician in Israel, and a frontrunner to become prime minister when an election finally comes. But, Peter points out, “if Gantz and his party leave, Netanyahu will still have 64 seats in his coalition, which is a majority.”
Meanwhile, there are those within Likud who no longer have faith in Netanyahu to lead them into the next election. “He is clearly a political liability for Likud,” Peter said. “People will be thinking about what the scale of the loss could be if he leads them again.” But at least until the war ends, few are willing to cross a leader with a reputation for machiavellian acts of vengeance, and no single candidate to succeed him has emerged.
Will the protests grow?
Last year, vast crowds were turning out for weekly protests against the Netanyahu government – a movement that swiftly dissipated in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks. Recently, though, there have been signs that the movement could reignite – and while the protests are not as large as those seen in 2023, “there does seem to be a growing heat around it,” Peter said.
“The difficulty at the moment is that there isn’t a single unifying idea that all of these protesters are aligning behind that can be enough to force elections. And Netanyahu has always told his voter base that there is a liberal lefty elite working against their interests – he will seek to present the protesters in the same way.”
But that strategy seems unlikely to expand his base of support from its current anaemic levels. “There are a lot of people looking at him now and saying, ‘he doesn’t have a clear direction, he seems erratic, and his time is over’. But people have endlessly written Netanyahu off, including myself, and he has defied them. The lesson of the Netanyahu era is: never say never.”
