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Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
JERUSALEM — Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party is doing something that doesn’t come easy to most politicians — he’s avoiding politics.
Lapid has so far abstained from joining the handful of other party leaders demanding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quit. (Even the once loyal Yisrael Hayom newspaper published a column urging he step aside once military victory has been secured.) And the question for most Israelis now, it seems, isn’t whether Netanyahu should go, but whether he should go sooner rather than later.
“I’m just running out of creative ways of not answering this question,” Lapid smiled.
As a former journalist and amateur boxer, the opposition leader knows how to sidestep trouble. “Since you are here and this isn’t a telephone interview and we are sitting together, which means we have been under the same sirens, let me say: We have soldiers fighting and being killed in Gaza; we have families waiting for their relatives held by Hamas to be free; we are a country at war. So, I’m going to wait to answer the question,” he said.
Lapid is holding back — probably wisely. Most Israelis now have little time for partisan politics. They believe everything should be bent to serve the national cause of defeating Hamas, the militant Palestinian faction behind the October 7 breach of Israel’s iron wall.
Lapid agrees with Netanyahu — as do other leaders across the political spectrum and most Israelis — that in the end, Israel must ensure there’s no Hamas in Gaza and that things don’t go back to the way they were before in the coastal Palestinian enclave. “Otherwise there will be continuous tragedies for Israelis and the people of Gaza,” he said.
Or, as Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant put it when dismissing French President Emmanuel Macron’s call or a cease-fire: “The people of Israel in 2023 are not in the year 1943. We have the means and the obligation to defend ourselves, by ourselves, and that’s what we’ll do.”
For his part, Lapid doesn’t mind the tough questions coming from Israel’s allies about its tactics. He does distinguish, however, between American and European politicians who, while friendly to Israel, also urge the country to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza and street protesters he regards as antisemitic.
He is also supportive of humanitarian pauses. “We don’t want people to die of thirst. We want them to have the water, the food, the medicines they need. We want to be as helpful as possible with children in hospitals. But what do you do when a hospital is a hub for a terror organization?” he asked.
According to Lapid, both the left and the right will have much to reflect on when the guns finally fall silent. In the past he has complained that Israel’s leftists fail to appreciate the harsh realities of living in a dangerous neighborhood surrounded by enemies. “The left has said we just need to sign the right piece of paper, and we’ll have peace because everyone wants the same thing. That’s wrong. There are people who have become murderers because of their perverse interpretation of Islam — I don’t want to insult Islam and call them Muslims. They’re just religious fanatics,” he said.
But Israel’s right wing has been similarly complacent in believing that “we can manage the conflict forever. No, you cannot,” he noted. “What we need in the future is to have two states and recognize it still will be imperfect, there will still be friction and clashes. It won’t be a new Middle East, but it will be better.”
Lapid hopes that Israel is heading for a major political realignment and that the country will be able to put Netanyahu behind it. “I told Blinken I’m a sad optimist. And Israel’s future can only be as a liberal democracy. If we want to return to being a very successful country, we must find our way back to being a country that’s led by liberal values,” he said.
Nor is Lapid the only one who has temporarily shelved partisan domestic politics. The mass protest movement opposed to Netanyahu’s controversial judicial changes has also suspended its raucous campaign, focusing instead on aiding both the families of those who lost their lives in the Hamas attacks and the tens of thousands evacuated from Israel’s north and south. According to the movement’s leaders, government support for the evacuees has been poor.
But top activists are already drafting plans for mass protests the day after the war is over — or possibly sooner. And their target won’t be the judicial reforms but Netanyahu himself. “It is clear to everyone that the moment the war is over, the atmosphere of unity and shared destiny, Netanyahu’s ‘together we will win,’ his ‘out of the disaster arose a new nation’ and so forth, will become a thing of the past. It will unravel in an instant,” said columnist Yossi Verter.
The prime minister is, in fact, almost the only person playing partisan politics at the moment, which is what prompted Yisrael Hayom to publish the column by its news head Uri Dagon, stating Netanyahu should quit the moment the war is over — a major departure for a newspaper that has been solidly pro-Netanyahu and is owned by his close friend, American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.
Dagon accused Netanyahu of “political mudslinging” after a series of divisive statements blaming everyone but himself for the failure to prevent the October 7 attacks. The prime minister, he continued, also prepared the groundwork to lay all the blame on the country’s military and intelligence chiefs. The latter have since accepted their share the blame — Netanyahu has not.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is focused on the war, no doubt, but Bibi Netanyahu is focused on saving his skin,” Dagon complained. His coalition ministers have been no better, engaging in “nonstop political bickering” and “jockeying for positions in the postwar reality.”
One widespread charge against Netanyahu is that he hasn’t become a truly national leader, and that he has prioritized keeping his coalition government together — one beholden to religious nationalists and extremist settler groups — above the national interest.
Accordingly, Netanyahu has been highly selective in his media appearances, avoiding set pieces on Israeli networks and questions at press conferences. He didn’t meet hostage families until a week after October 7 — and even then, only those who supported his Likud party.
Israel has many political fault lines, but whether Netanyahu should go now or later has become a key one. At the moment, however, most don’t want the disruption of an exit. “I don’t think there’s any appetite right now,” said Nimrod Goren, an Israeli academic and fellow at the Middle East Institute.
“The sense is that we need to unite around the goal of the war and [getting] the hostages back — and not unite around the leader. In the past, at a time of war, people rallied around the leader. But this isn’t happening because people don’t have faith in him or government leaders overall,” he said.
An exception to this rule is Benny Gantz, a retired general and former prime minister who joined the emergency war cabinet despite his personal dislike for Netanyahu and the political differences between them. “Gantz is emerging quite dramatically in the polls in terms of the level of trust people have in him. He’s seen as this responsible, coolheaded former chief of the General Staff,” Goren said.
So, is this the beginning of the end for Bibi?
Goren can’t see how Netanyahu can survive once the war is over — even if it drags on for months. Others, including Netanyahu’s bitter enemies, aren’t so sure, noting that his political obituary has been written many times before, and that he is now fighting not just for political survival but also to stay out of jail.
“I do see a scenario of how he stays,” said Israeli tech magnate and fierce Netanyahu critic Eyal Waldman. “If he does defeat Hamas and bring the hostages back home, then there might be a way he survives. I’m afraid of that scenario,” he added.
After most recent tumults, Palestinians have wound up more disunited while Israelis have lurched further to the right. And if that happens this time as well, Bibi’s enemies fear he just might somehow manage to hold on.
