Six months into its conflict with Hamas, Israel experiences dwindling international support—a stark contrast to the initial backing received at the conflict's outset.
Hamas’ attack on October 7 killed about 1,200 Israelis and saw more than 250 taken hostage, shocking Israel and the world. Hamas took more than 250 people hostage during the attack; 123 of them have already been released.
The initial global solidarity with Israel, highlighted by a visit from President Joe Biden, has now shifted toward criticism.
In response to Hamas’ offensive, Israel launched a significant military operation, striking Gaza from the air and sea and deploying hundreds of thousands of ground troops into the territory. The Gaza Health Ministry, operated by Hamas, reports that since the war's start, Israel's actions have resulted in approximately 32,000 deaths and nearly 75,000 injuries in Gaza.
Israel claims that at least half of the dead are Hamas terrorists, while Hamas has not disclosed the number of its members that have been killed. The UN classifies more than 1.7 million Gaza residents as displaced and more than 70,000 housing units destroyed. Other international agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe and pending famine.
Accusations against Israel continue to mount as it also faces a trial at the International Court of Justice on allegations of genocide it is said to be committing against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
In addition, several countries have announced they will stop exporting arms to Israel, and Washington and Jerusalem have had a very public spat about Israel’s military strategy in Gaza. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron warned Israel against committing war crimes ahead of a possible operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where many of the displaced Palestinians have found shelter.
The initial scenes of Israel under attack on October 7 swiftly gave way to images of Palestinian suffering. The longer the war goes on, the less legitimacy Israel has. Anti-Israeli protests have been staged in capitals all over the world, which have influenced governments. Israel’s refusal to discuss the future of Gaza while ruling out any solution offered by the international community has put it in an unpopular position.
Israel is not only facing Hamas in Gaza. It is under continuous fire from the Lebanon-based Hizbullah terrorist organization and has also been the target of rockets from the Yemen-based Houthi rebels. In addition, Syria, another one of Israel's neighbors in the north, serves as a major route for weapons movement from Iran to organizations such as Hizbullah.
“When you have such a complex national security crisis, and this is probably one of the more absolute complex crises Israel has had, more than anything, Israel needs its major allies,” said Ambassador (ret.) Jeremy Issacharoff, former vice director-general and head of the Multilateral Directorate of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and previous Israeli ambassador to Germany.
“It is also important to understand that if, before, Israel could deal with these different facets with relative dislinkage from the Palestinian issue, the Palestinian issue has now become a vital part of how Israel deals with the multiple fronts, particularly in terms of avoiding tensions with the US and neighboring Arab countries,” Issacharoff added.
Over the past two decades, the Palestinian issue has been largely sidelined due to a vast range of reasons. Before that, the Palestinian cause united Arab countries against Israel and was continuously in the headlines. However, in recent years, this focus changed, allowing for the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab countries, in addition to the peace accords Israel already had with Egypt and Jordan.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, cultivated this sidelining. Opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state, he used the newly forged peace with the United Arab Emirates and other countries as proof of his conviction that the status quo between Israelis and Palestinians was sustainable.
The reality on Oct. 7 showed otherwise, catapulting the Palestinian cause back to global headlines and dominating the international agenda for months to follow.
Dr. Shay Atias from the Bar-Ilan University School of Communications believes the key to understanding Israel’s international standing is to look at its relationship with the US.
“The younger generations of Americans do not understand America’s history of blind support for Israel,” Atias, also a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, told The Media Line. “This began way before Oct. 7.”
Israel's Shifting Global Perception Amidst Gaza Crisis
With the US voicing increasing dissatisfaction with Israel’s policy, the rest of the world is following suit. The continuing flow of images of mass destruction in Gaza is not favorable to Israel. Neither are the mounting casualties and warnings of hospitals unable to tend to the huge number of injured.
“For years, Israel has failed to communicate with younger generations in terms of the liberal discourse,” Atias added. “But also, we are after many years of growing frustration of any breakthrough or Israeli initiative regarding the Palestinian issue. Israel is now paying the price.”
The notion that the Palestinian-Israel status quo was unsustainable was expressed by many international leaders throughout the years and also within Israel, mainly from the dovish elements of the left wing. However, as Israel consistently leaned more and more to the right, those voices were brushed aside. When the current war erupted with Hamas’ attack, the initial reaction was support for Israel, but soon after the tide changed.
“Israel went very quickly from international support and solidarity to questions about what it really wants,” said Michael Harari, a former senior Israeli diplomat and policy fellow at Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies. “While governments understand Israel’s needs to eradicate Hamas, they are wondering whether Israel can do so, and, more importantly, what will happen after that. Israel is not supplying these answers.”
According to Harari, this is something Israel can easily do by agreeing to principles that would make it appear more forthcoming to solving the conflict.
“The international community wants answers to an impossible situation,” he told The Media Line. “Israel needs to shift course and speak differently on humanitarian aid, the future of Hamas and what this means about who rules Gaza after, making clear it doesn’t intend to remain in Gaza or forcibly remove Palestinians from there.”
“Without this, Israel continues to be perceived as entrenching itself and refusing any solution,” Harari added. “But Israel’s main problem is that it appears to be completely indifferent and lacking empathy to the humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
In a recent survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute, 80% of Jewish Israelis think that when planning the next stages of the fighting, the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza should be taken into account to a fairly small extent or not at all. This puts the Israeli leadership in a difficult position; it faces internal public opinion on the one side while on the other side, it faces what some call a political tsunami that threatens to further isolate Israel on the international stage.
“If there will be no material change, things will get worse and there will be a domino effect,” said Harari. “The current crisis between Israel and the US will affect other countries who will follow suit.”
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has driven a wedge between Washington and Jerusalem. Just this week, the US did not veto a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. In response, Netanyahu canceled an Israeli delegation trip to the US that was meant to review its military plans with the White House. In an apparent about-face, Netanyahu has now decided to send the delegation in an attempt to appease the Biden Administration and save Israel from further discord with its major ally.
“At times like this, Israel need to express vision of where it wants to go,” added Issacharoff, who is also a senior research fellow at the Institute for Policy & Strategy. “The range of regional threats do not just affect Israel but threaten a number of different countries in the region. Such a vision needs to be used to galvanize Israel’s allies to understand that the sympathy and solidarity Israel had in the beginning of the war should be reinforced now even more.”
Netanyahu’s inability to discuss Israel’s plans for Gaza also stems from his political standing. Increasingly unpopular in the polls, he leads an extreme-right wing coalition that refuses any notion of Palestinian statehood or the Palestinian Authority as a possible Hamas successor in Gaza. Any concession on Netanyahu’s part could come at the expense of his political survival.
“The leadership needs to take courageous decisions and divorce all decisions that need to be taken from political and personal considerations,” Issacharoff said. “This is a time to put the national interest first and foremost.”