For decades, Benjamin Netanyahu touted himself as Mr Security, the leader Israelis could count on to keep them safe. Then came Hamas’s October 7 assault, which killed 1,200 people, and took at least 230 hostages, shattering the Prime Minister’s image as protector of Israel. Ever since, he has been desperately trying to redeem his reputation. The ferocity of Israel’s retaliation in Gaza owes as much to this as to the shock and horror that swept the country in the aftermath of the atrocity.
One year on, Netanyahu is determined to continue his war in Gaza at all costs—not just to Gazans, of whom more than 40,000 have been killed and another 1.9 million (90% of the population) displaced, but to the Israeli hostages as well. His future and the outcome of the war are now inseparable.
Even before October 7, Netanyahu was highly polarising. Liberal Israelis turned up in vast numbers to protest his policies, denouncing him as a threat to democracy and the rule of law, while those on the Right saw him as a peerless leader, even a saviour. Attitudes towards him have only hardened. The families of the remaining hostages believe that only a ceasefire will bring their loved ones home and that Netanyahu refuses to agree to one because he is obsessed with destroying Hamas entirely. Other Israelis are convinced that Netanyahu is bent on prolonging the Gaza war to remain in power so as to avoid facing the pending corruption charges against him. More still see him as a threat to rule of law in Israel. Many Israelis hold all three of these opinions. In a late July interview, the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert went to far as to warn that the country could descend into civil war—a view shared by nearly half the respondents in an August poll.
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