Netanyahu is once again the most popular politician in Israel

May 2023. Barely half a year after winning the election, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval rating is plummetting due to his judicial reforms, which divide Israel and spark mass protests that will go down in history. The polls predict that National Unity, the party of former defense minister Benny Gantz, will triple its seats in the Knesset and replace Netanyahu’s Likud party — which is forecast to lose a third of its support — as the leading force.

December 2023. Two months earlier, on October 7, Israel experienced the deadliest day in its history, when a militia (Hamas) — with few resources, living under a blockade in the walled-in Gaza — surprised one of the best intelligence services in the world, which took hours to respond. On the brink of the new year, Netanyahu’s image as “Mr. Security” could not be more damaged. The polls show Likud losing half of its voters and barely winning 17 of the 120 seats. Gantz is set to win up to a third of parliament.

August 2024. Netanyahu is still in power and the situation is still dire in Israel. The invasion of Gaza is the longest war in the country’s history: 10 months, and there is still no sign of the “total victory” promised by Netanyahu. Nor have his two objectives been met: “completely destroying” Hamas (militants have killed Israeli soldiers almost daily, including three last Friday) and bringing back the hostages: 109 remain and the last six have returned in coffins. Only 26% of the population is optimistic about national security (half as many as two years ago) and confidence is falling even in the army: 62% see the situation as “bad or very bad.”

Tens of thousands of citizens still do not know when they will return to their homes, as Hezbollah rockets continue to rain down every day. Instead of a deadline, they have authorities’ threats to send Lebanon “back to the Stone Age” — plunging Israel into a war with unpredictable consequences. People are hoarding water, flashlights and electric generators in anticipation of Iran and Hezbollah’s retaliation, while the Israeli flag — linked to the devastation and spiralling death toll in Gaza — is booed around the world. The international justice system is considering whether to put Israel on trial for genocide and has requested the arrest of Netanyahu for alleged crimes against humanity.

Netanyahu, however, is surging in the polls, living up to his reputation as a political survivor, capable of coming back even when his political epitaph is being drafted. On August 9 — for the first time in more than a year — a poll by the daily Maariv placed his party, Likud, as the leading political force and Netanyahu as the favorite to lead the country.

It does not seem like this is a one-hit wonder. The momentum has continued ever since. On Friday, the poll increased the gap between the two rival parties to two deputies.

But Gideon Rahat, one of the country’s leading political analysts, urges caution. “His situation has improved, but I don’t think it’s as good now either,” Rahat, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, says by phone. “After October 7, he was called a political corpse too soon. He dropped in the polls, but he was still supported by the ultra-Orthodox parties, who don’t care how the country fares because they only care about their own affairs, and by the far-right, because Netanyahu allows them to advance their agenda. And the Biblical scholars, who have become a kind of sect,” adds Rahat. These sectors are staunch supporters of Netanyahu (nicknamed Bibi): at rallies and demonstrations, they chant slogans that border on a cult of personality, such as “Rak Bibi” (Bibi only) or “Melej Israel” (King of Israel).

But just as Netanyahu’s situation was not as bad as it appeared, it is not in great shape either. According to Rahat, his steady rise in the polls is due to a combination of temporary factors: the lack of significant alternatives, the work of a “poison machine” that discredits his rivals, and the fact that former who turned their backs on him out of anger over October 7 have returned to the fold. What’s more, his improved approval rating has no practical relevance as Israel’s next election is not scheduled until 2026. The question, therefore, is not how Netanyahu is doing, “but how the rest are doing.”

Gantz is a good example. A respected former minister from the opposition, Gantz’s popularity has been in decline since he left the national unity government that Netanyahu created to manage the war. His decision to leave in June pleased no one. The Israelis who considered him a serious ex-soldier concerned only with the country saw it as political move, spurred by the possibility of early elections, which he failed to force. And the Israelis who had been loudly calling for him to step down received the news almost reluctantly, because it was not going to help topple Netanyahu’s government. So Gantz left and Netanyahu began climbing in the polls.

In Friday’s poll, the parties in government would only win 52 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, well below the 63 that give them a majority today. But the other 68 seats are far from forming an alternative to power. In Israel, it matters more who can form a coalition than who comes first. The opposition is made up of the centrist Zionist parties that celebrate the devastation of Gaza and most of the parties that represent the Palestinian minority in Israel — two groups that will never govern together, no matter how much they dislike Netanyahu. In fact, the Jewish opposition parties would fall three seats short of a majority.

Shalom Lipner served seven consecutive Israeli prime ministers in his Jerusalem office, between 1990 and 2006. Among them, Netanyahu. Today, he is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East program, an international affairs think tank based in Washington. Lipner cautions against overstating Netanyahu’s rise in the polls, arguing it is largely in response to “the absence of a coherent alternative.” “He suffered a big blow after October 7. I wouldn’t say that time has healed him, but it is passing. Added to that are the high-profile assassinations [of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders], with a certain degree of success, and the fact that, despite being a country still in trauma, its inhabitants feel that there are far fewer threats to their security now [...] There is also an entire generation of Israelis who have not known another prime minister,” says Lipner by phone.

After the Hamas attack, half the country turned on Netanyahu for not resigning. With his documented resilience, he weathered the storm. “Knowing how to read situations: when to be pragmatic, when to wait ... These are things you learn in politics. And he has had plenty of time to do it,” says Lipner.

From ‘obstacle to peace’ to guest at US Congress

The opposition, for example, has been accusing Netanyahu for years of turning Israel into an international pariah and endangering its alliance with Washington. But last July, with more than 30,000 dead in Gaza, Netanyahu was invited to speak to the U.S. Congress. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer attended despite previously calling Netanyahu a “major obstacle to peace” who “lost his way” and allowed “his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.” Inviting Netanyahu to Congress did not exactly send the image that Israel was a pariah.

Accoring to Lipner, Netanyahu is also ahead in the polls due to “concern about Iran.” It is the same conclusion reached by Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst and expert in public opinion, who argued the turning point was April 2024. That month, a bombing of an Iranian consular building in Damascus killed three senior military officers, showing how Israel’s intelligence services are capable of taking action beyond Israel’s borders. After that, Netanyahu began to rise in the polls.

When Iran’s retaliation came, Israel had the support of the U.S., the U.K., France and even one Arab country, Jordan, which shot down 99% of the more than 300 missiles and drones launched by Tehran. In Israel, the national news made scant mention of the fact that Iran had designed the attack to limit its damage, focusing instead on Israel’s defensive might and the support of the international alliance. That month, polls gave Netanyahu his best approval ratings since the start of the war, even though two-thirds of the population still did not believe his claim that “total victory” in Gaza was within reach.

In July, a rocket — allegedly accidentally fired by Hezbollah — killed 12 children in the Golan Heights. Netanyahu upped the ante with two top-level assassinations: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah’s number two, Fuad Shukr. The army then announced the assassination of Mohamed Deif, the head of Hamas’ armed wing, in Gaza. Netanyahu again gained popularity. “In other words,” Scheindlin summarizes, “for Netanyahu, Iran is a winning issue.”

Iran’s promises of retaliation have not prompted Israelis to ask whether the assassination was necessary. The feeling is they deserved it and Israel must remain united in the face of the threat from Tehran and Hezbollah.

Netanyahu’s resilience

Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister: he has been in power 17 years out of Israel’s 76 years of history: between 1996 and 1999 and since 2009, with a small break. And while he’s often needed to pull a rabbit out of the hat, his longevity in politics is testament to the fact that he unites more than he divides.

“He is a classic populist leader, like [Donald] Trump or [Nicolás] Maduro, who pits half the people against the other half. And if his half is a little bigger, then he wins,” says Rahat.

This is, in fact, what Netanyahu has done for almost his entire political career. No one imagined, for example, that he would come to power in 1996, when Shimon Peres called early elections after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Netanyahu gained a 20 percentage point lead in the polls. He won 50.5% of the vote, thanks to massive ultra-Orthodox support and the fact that Peres’ image was damaged by a wave of Palestinian suicide attacks and the failure of Operation Grapes of Wrath in Lebanon. Peres tried to steal Netanyahu’s tough rhetoric, and ended up causing a massacre and accepting, under pressure, a ceasefire.

In 2009, Netanyahu also bounced back to power. The Kadima party won the elections, but its leader, Tzipi Livni, refused to give in to the ultra-Orthodox wing’s terms, which she described as “blackmail.” Netanyahu, with fewer scruples, forged a coalition. Six years later, in another election and with the polls against him, he resorted directly to racism, stirring up the fears of the Jewish majority with the argument that Israeli Arabs were “voting in droves” to oust him from power.

The division over Netanyahu plunged the country into a crisis of governability, with four elections in just two years. That came to an end in November 2022, when Likud won and formed an alliance with ultra-nationalist and ultra-Orthodox groups to create the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. Several ministers support the ethnic cleansing and recolonization of Gaza: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said it is “just and moral” to starve the more than two million Gazans; while National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has called for Palestinians holding Molotov cocktails to be shot dead.

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