If the Netanyahu Government Falls, This Will Be the Reason

A woman reacting at the site of a damaged residential building after it was struck by a projectile fired from Lebanon, in Nahariya, northern Israel, on April 13. Credit: Ariel Schalit/AP

If you're a resident of Israel's northern regions, especially those close to the border with Lebanon, life has long been intolerable. Maybe you were displaced for nearly two years after Hezbollah attacked Israel on October 8, 2023. Maybe you came back eventually, only to cope with a fresh war when Hezbollah attacked Israel's north once again in March, in solidarity with Iran.

Before the April cease-fire, missile and drone attacks were ongoing – you had to keep an eye out for pillboxes on the street in places like Kiryat Shmona to duck in fast, if you planned to go out at all. The Israel-Hezbollah fighting never really stopped; the pace of Hezbollah's attacks has increased steadily since the start of the cease-fire, according to Alma, a think tank focused on Israel's northern front.

Israel is also doing tremendous damage in Lebanon – nearly 3,500 people have been killed since this round of fighting began, and the IDF has been conducting house-to-house razing operations in southern areas where Hezbollah is embedded. This week, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened to bomb the Dahiyeh area of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, and issued evacuation warnings, but mostly held off following American pressure.

Israelis sitting in a bomb shelter after an air raid siren in Kiryat Shmona near Lebanon in April. Credit: Ariel Schalit/AP

But from the perspective of Israelis living in the north, this is not only a military or strategic disaster; it's also political. I would never predict outcomes of a September-or-October election yet, but if Netanyahu and his government lose, the north could well be part of the reason.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an emerging hypothesis that the changing sentiments of northern residents could be decisive. Some of the towns there displayed very high support for coalition parties in 2022, meaning they have a long way to fall. For many, the last few years have broken their relationship with this government, and perhaps it can't be repaired.

The reasons are manifold. Starting with the most immediate one, northern residents will be angry at news of a fresh cease-fire announced on Wednesday morning: A late May survey by the Institute for National Security Studies found that 59 percent of Israelis want to intensify the fighting against Hezbollah, but fully 78 percent of respondents from the north gave that response – nearly 20 points higher.

When Israel did start a war – with Iran – it had wall-to-wall support among the Jewish population, but the northern residents were simultaneously furious that the government hadn't prepared them for a predictable resurgence of fighting with Hezbollah.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon in mid-April. Credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO

They felt betrayed in hindsight by Netanyahu's triumphant assertions that Hezbollah was destroyed, decapitated and all manner of superlatives in November 2024. Was he lying at the expense of their lives?

Each week seems to bring fresh and spiteful insults. A few months ago, the government tried to slash the recovery packages to the north by several billion shekels, to redirect funding for their pet political projects. This week the government promised to hold a security cabinet meeting in the north in solidarity – it was moved from Sunday, deferred to Tuesday, moved to Jerusalem. In the end, just three ministers attended; others opted to attend the bat mitzvah of the daughter of settler leader Yossi Dagan.

Netanyahu announced a few extra billion to reinforce buildings and shelters at that meeting, which probably won't erase what these residents have been through up to now.

Civilian response team members searching for a Hezbollah drone from an Israeli home in Metula, at the Israel-Lebanon border, on June 1. Credit: Amir Cohen/Reuters

On Wednesday evening, three mayors and local council leaders took to prime-time news on Channel 12, looking desperate. "They try to tell you the boom is not a bomb, and that the buzzing of drones is just a mosquito!" said one. In the same item, a man at a shut-down hummus shop said "even the cats and dogs won't go out," while Moshe Davidovich, head of the Mateh Asher regional council, said "there are two states here: one living, one dead." I spoke to someone in the north this week who lamented the cancellations and uncertainty of life: "It has to get better," she said. I asked how. She responded: "First of all, change the government."

To be sure, there is a long Israeli tradition of complaining bitterly about Netanyahu and Likud and voting for them anyway. Moreover, the northern regions most affected don't yield many parliamentary seats. An AI calculation of the actual 2022 results from the Central Election Committee (which I spot-checked) found that the three northernmost regions – the Galilee Panhandle area, the Western Galilee and the Golan Heights – made up just under four seats. That includes Arab towns as well, which were never giving the coalition many votes anyway.

But this election could turn on a single seat if it gives some bloc 61 rather than 60. Every vote for an opposition party, or insufficient turnout for the coalition, will matter.

A campaign billboard in Kiryat Shmona posted by Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party that reads: "Yashar is with the north!" Credit: Gil Eliahu

That other issue

The north isn't the only traditional vote-getter for the coalition that might be having doubts. The next factor that could peel off votes from the coalition parties seems unrelated at first glance – but it's not.

On Wednesday evening, a gang of young ultra-Orthodox men roamed through the streets of Alon Shvut, a West Bank settlement south of Jerusalem, where Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg lives. At least one even brandished a swastika to symbolize their victimization by the state, after the Supreme Court upheld efforts to draft them into the IDF.

The pack stalked towards Sohlberg's home, braying, and trashed the area outside, breaking windows, property, windshields. The family called the police from inside the house while members of the community thronged to protect them. The justice's wife, shaking and almost in tears, called it a pogrom and compared the attack to Kristallnacht.

This scene will be seared into the minds of many in this mostly right-wing, Orthodox settlement. Members of the religious Zionist community perform combat army service at disproportionately high rates. During the unending wars since 2023, they also die at very high rates.

The long-running tensions between religious Zionist Israelis and the Haredim over the latter's refusal to serve has pushed some Orthodox voters towards total alienation or even disgust. And the slavish devotion of this government to Haredi interests – stagnation on forcing their conscription, handing over piles of public funds to prop up their effective secession from Israeli society – could also turn some coalition voters into formers.

Haredim blocking traffic on Sunday on a major highway outside Tel Aviv to protest efforts to enlist ultra-Orthodox men in the Israeli army. Credit: Moti Milrod

What about the attack on Israel's judicial authorities – will that also change their vote? Critics of the long-running right-wing incitement against the judiciary had warned of violence to justices long before the last elections. In 2021, I observed "alarming developments," reflected in ideologically polarized views of legal institutions. "Due to personal threats and incidents of vandalism, Supreme Court justices, the attorney general and state prosecutors have all required security protection at various times; reportedly, the chief justice has a permanent security detail. In June 2020, two Supreme Court justices received right-wing threats within two days of one another."

Anyone who voted for parties of the current coalition in late 2022 probably thought such warnings were exaggerated. But a segment of those same voters had buyer's remorse already in early 2023, due to the government's program to undermine the judiciary. By mid-February 2023, two surveys showed that the coalition had lost its majority, declining by five seats – a few percentage points. That was all before the wars, the draft issue, and ultra-Orthodox flaunting their outlaw status with taxpayer funds. But now all of these angles are inseparable.

Here is the bottom line: For almost two years, polls have been remarkably stable, showing that the coalition parties cannot break out of their concrete ceiling in the range of 49 to 55 seats (out of 120 in total). There is a lingering question about whether the Netanyahu-loyalist parties can still claw back a few percentage points to get a majority of Knesset seats (let's say up to 10 percent more than they have today in polls). If they can't, my guess is that we know the reasons now.