A future government could pay the price for the prime minister’s insistence on taking a hard line on security in order to win votes.
Although Donald Trump insists that his plan for Gaza will be accepted, it is highly unlikely that Benjamin Netanyahu will agree to such a deal before Israel’s general election in October. His immediate response was clear: there will be no Israeli military withdrawal until Hamas is completely disarmed.
It follows that the prospects for the two million Palestinians crammed into barely a third of Gaza’s original territory depend to a large extent on whether Netanyahu remains in power. But even if he loses, the opposition in the Knesset (parliament) is so divided that there is no guarantee that a future government would seek a fair agreement with the Palestinians.
While declining support for Israel in the United States is a major concern for Netanyahu, Israeli public opinion at home is, for now, much more important. Over the next two months, he will try to draw voters’ attention toward national security, repeatedly hammering home the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.
In particular, Netanyahu will emphasize the need for Israelis to have full control over Gaza. Israeli airstrikes on the territory will continue and are likely to intensify, provoking reactions from Hamas. He may also try to raise tensions in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, whose security he hopes to turn into another key issue for voters.
Incursions by Jewish religious extremists, backed by the government, are already increasing in the West Bank, encouraged by Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who heads a powerful faction of the governing coalition. Two weeks ago, Ben Gvir led more than 2,000 Israelis who stormed the compound surrounding the Al-Aqsa Mosque and even prayed there — for many, one of the holiest sites in Islam — in what, according to Jordanian officials, was the worst violation in modern history. Under a decades-old agreement between Israel and Jordan regulating the status quo at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, entry is not prohibited to Jews, but praying there is.
Netanyahu will also try to center his campaign on the continuing tensions with Iran’s hard-liner regime, as well as with the religious militia Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamist paramilitary groups in Syria and Iraq.
Critics may argue that many of these problems stem from the failures of Netanyahu’s own coalition, but this currently carries surprisingly little weight in Israel. Even the argument that public support for Israel in the U.S. is fading can be turned around; after all, Trump has proved so unpredictable that Israel must always be prepared to act on its own.
In any case, the long-term danger for future Israeli governments may not stem from local or regional factors, but from the international community — particularly Israel’s traditional allies in the West.
Global support for the Palestinians grew amid the almost total destruction of Gaza carried out by Israel since October 2023, which left nearly 100,000 people dead or missing and survivors trapped in an open-air prison. This support is likely to increase further as more evidence of Israeli atrocities emerges.
In the United Kingdom, for example, two new books were published featuring first-hand accounts of the treatment of Palestinians. One is “Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza”, by journalist Peter Oborne, a heavily referenced account of Britain’s support for Israel; the other is “The Gaza Tribunal: Britain’s Complicity in Genocide”, which details the findings of an investigation conducted by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and human rights lawyers Neve Gordon and Shahd Hammouri.
The tribunal, which Corbyn set up after the British Parliament refused to investigate, met in London and heard testimony — filled with harrowing details — from international healthcare professionals who had worked in hospitals in Gaza.
Over the past 80 years, successive Israeli governments have considered it necessary to devote considerable resources to maintaining numerous friendly relationships with influential politicians and other government figures around the world. In the early decades of the State of Israel, this was hardly surprising, given the memories of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Some of these relationships have cooled in recent years. Netanyahu and other members of his government currently regard this as a minor problem, but it could well become a much bigger one in the coming years, especially because the appalling treatment of Palestinians receives little attention from the majority of Israeli Jews.
Some Israeli politicians are already beginning to worry that several European states are banning products exported from illegal settlements in the West Bank. They fear further international economic restrictions, such as boycotts, divestment and sanctions.
An indicator of this trend may emerge in the United Kingdom. Recent British governments remained committed to controlling public opposition to Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians, including novel legal interpretations of terrorism that led to the arrest of thousands of protesters. The new Labour government under Andy Burnham can be expected to face strong opposition if it adopts the same approach. But if it changes course, whoever wins the next election in Israel should take note.
