It is a fool’s errand to ever count out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Some did that in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, arguing that this was such a colossal failure, such a monumental collapse, such an unprecedented breakdown, that not even Netanyahu could survive politically.
They were wrong, but their assumptions were not crazy.
What were those assumptions? That the top of Israel’s pyramid at the time of the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust would either accept responsibility and step aside or be held responsible and be forced by public pressure to step down (as Golda Meir did a few months after the 1973 Yom Kippur War).
The assumption was that Netanyahu, who built an aura for himself over his long years in office as Mr. Security, as the man who would keep the country safe both from Palestinian terrorists and Iranian nukes, could not survive the biggest security failure in the country’s history.
An, indeed, the polling immediately after October 7 and for some four months afterward bore this out.
Maariv, The Jerusalem Post’s sister publication, has been running polls every Friday since February 2023. In its poll on October 6, the Likud—which has 32 seats in the current Knesset—dropped to 28, and that was after nine months of tumult and protests surrounding the judicial reform plan. In Maariv’s poll the following week, on October 13, the Likud fell to 19 seats, a 32% drop in a week.
This precipitous decline reflected the seething public anger and rage at the time at the country’s political and military leadership that enabled such a horrific disaster. In the immediate aftermath, cabinet ministers could not visit the wounded in hospitals because they would be shouted down by enraged relatives.
The Likud’s polling numbers—meaning, essentially, Netanyahu’s numbers—continued to drop until they reached a nadir on January 12 of 16 seats, which is just half of the party’s current strength.
At that point, it looked like Netanyahu was through and that it was just a matter of time before he would somehow be forced out—either by public clamor or by people inside his own party worried that the party would lose power if he remained at the helm.
Netanyahu digs in
Yet Netanyahu did what he does best: he dug in. The prime minister, who on September 28 marked 17 years in office over three different terms, has not lasted that long by listening and deciding his political fate according to the background noise: the pundits, the journalists, the opposition politicians.
Netanyahu dug in when he was indicted and taken to trial—“there will be nothing because there was nothing”—and he dug in after October 7. In both cases, predictions of his imminent political demise proved premature.
There was no reason to resign because of an enemy attack, Netanyahu argued, just as Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not resign after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
And as for accepting responsibility, he kicked that can down the road, saying that he—like everyone—would have to answer tough questions when the time comes. And when will that time come? Only after the war, he maintained.
His refusal to utter the words “I am responsible” infuriated much of the country, since for them it seemed so obvious that he owns the policy toward Hamas and Gaza—a policy that led to October 7—having been prime minister for 14 of the last 15 years.
But for Netanyahu, there was political wisdom in not saying “it’s my fault.” Admitting responsibility could lead to being attacked with those words, not just in the present but also in future elections.
And, incredible as it might sound considering the cataclysm that took place under his watch, he could very well contest the next election—an election that, equally incredulously, might now not take place until its scheduled date in October 2026.
Even if the elections are held early, the polls right now are shining on the prime minister—also astonishing considering October 7. Maariv’s poll last Wednesday showed Netanyahu’s Likud winning 26 seats were the elections held today, seven seats more than Benny Gantz’s National Unity party.
Perhaps more telling, Netanyahu even outpolls a new right-wing party expected to be established by former prime minister Naftali Bennett, 23 to 20 in that survey.
In either scenario, it would be difficult for Netanyahu to form a coalition, unless some parties that boycotted him in the past, like Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, would sit with him now. But by the same token, it would also be a challenge for those in the opposition today to set up a coalition without the Arab parties.
How did he do it? How did Netanyahu turn around his political fortunes?
First of all, by keeping his 64-seat coalition in tact, even if it meant giving in to the demands of his coalition partners on the far-Right: Itamar ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Netanyahu’s critics argue that he prioritized his political survival over the good of the country, and that he caved to Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s demands regarding the waging of the war to remain in power. Likewise, they say that he has sold out to the haredi parties and will not push for enlistment of yeshiva students not becuase he believes in it, but only to remain in power.
What Netanyahu has done by keeping his coalition intact is to buy time, both hoping and gambling that his political fortunes will change as the tide of the war turns -- from the very outset, he said that this will be a long war. And, in recent weeks, the tide has begun to shift.
October 7 was a colossal failure, so Netanyahu’s numbers dipped. Over the last few weeks, however, his polling numbers are on an upswing.
Yes, 101 hostages are still held by Hamas. Yes, Hamas still largely has civilian control of Gaza. Yes, missiles are falling on Israelis from seemingly everywhere: Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon.
But it is also true that Israel has significantly degraded Hamas’ military capabilities, rendering it no longer a threat as an organized fighting force. It has also, in recent weeks, performed brilliantly against Hezbollah, beginning with the exploding beepers, moving through the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, and including the significant degradation of Hezbollah’s missile capabilities.
It is only natural that the popularity of the leader of a nation at war falls and rises with the fortunes of that war, and right now Netanyahu’s numbers are on the rise as the war is going better than it was just a few weeks earlier.
Netanyahu is also benefiting from the lack of anyone out there who can pose a real challenge. Gantz, Yair Lapid, and Liberman are doing nothing to enthuse the nation or rally it around their leadership -- simply slamming Netanyahu, which is Lapid and Liberman’s default mode, is not doing the trick.
. Bennett is doing well in the polls, but he historically does much better in surveys then at the ballot box. New faces, new heroes from the war may yet emerge and shake up the political deck, but so far they have not done so.
Netanyahu has also done something else smart politically: he has stayed the course.
The prime minister said after October 7 he would go into Gaza; the world protested, yet he went into Gaza. He said he would go into Rafah; the world protested, yet he went into Rafah. He said he would take action to return the residents to the north; the world shouted, and he took fierce action against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
This willingness to stay the course speaks to his base, a base that crumbled in the first few weeks after the war—note the drop from 32 seats to 16, but which is now coming back home.
The anti-Netanyahu protests also rally the base. The more strident the anti-Netanyahu message, the more he is called a “traitor,” “murderer,” and someone who does not care about the hostages languishing in Hamas's dungeons, the more his base—who finds all that language offensive—will rally around him.
Netanyahu’s base also rallies around him when he calls out the world’s hypocrisy in a speech at the UN, when he tells French President Emmanuel Macron that his country’s policies are shameful, and when he does not bow completely to pressure from US President Joe Biden.
If, on October 7, it did not seem possible for Netanyahu to survive politically, a year later, it appears that he very well might. It also now seems likely that October 7 may not define his legacy.
It all depends on where things go from here. If, in addition to significantly defanging Hamas, Netanyahu succeeds in removing Hezbollah as a threat to the northern communities, and takes significant action against Iran that changes the face of the Middle East for decades, then that success, and not the October 7 failure, will largely define his legacy, as well as determine the 74-year-old’s political future.