Israelis want Benjamin Netanyahu to say sorry and go away. A survey released this week by the Israel Democracy Institute found that a staggering 87 percent of Israelis think the prime minister should take responsibility for the events of October 7, and 73 percent want him to resign either now or after the Gaza war. These figures might seem shocking to outsiders, but they are actually old news. Since October 7, the Israeli public has consistently told pollsters that it wants Netanyahu gone—a preference that has held through every twist and turn of the war and has, if anything, intensified over time.
The reason for this is simple: Netanyahu not only presided over the worst security failure in Israel’s history but has actively governed against the will of the country’s majority. He and his allies received just 48.4 percent of the vote in late 2022. Still, the Israeli leader did not seek to unite a polarized population by pivoting to the center. Instead he cobbled together a sectarian coalition with unpopular extremist constituencies: far-right messianic settlers and the ultra-Orthodox. Because the votes of both of these groups are necessary for the government to remain in power, they have been able to extort Netanyahu for ever-expanding giveaways and political gains. The result: On core issue after issue, Netanyahu has been the prime minister for the 30 percent.
Take the cease-fire deal that is currently in limbo in Gaza. Polls consistently show that some 70 percent of Israelis want the arrangement to continue until all of the hostages are free, even if that means releasing many convicted terrorists and ending the war with Hamas still at large. Likewise, a significant majority of Israelis reject any effort to resettle Gaza. But in his coalition, Netanyahu is beholden to the radical minority that wants not only to restart the war but also to ethnically cleanse Gaza in order to repopulate it with Jewish communities. And so the hostage deal teeters on the edge.
Or consider the question of ultra-Orthodox enlistment in the Israeli army. That army is not volunteer; it relies on a universal draft to fill its ranks. But since the country’s founding, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community has been exempt from participation; its young men instead study in government-subsidized religious seminaries while their brethren defend the country. This arrangement was deeply unpopular, but for decades, Israelis grudgingly accepted it in exchange for ultra-Orthodox cooperation on more pressing political matters. But today, as Israel faces combat on multiple fronts, there is no more pressing matter than staffing the strapped armed forces. And given that the ultra-Orthodox community is now the fastest-growing demographic in Israel, its absence from the national defense is no longer tenable. Since October 7, polls show that about 70 percent of Israelis—including a majority of those who voted for the ruling right-wing government—oppose the ultra-Orthodox exemptions. A similar number opposes state subsidies to this community and its religious institutions. None of these preferences has changed government policy.
Netanyahu’s disregard for majority opinion predates October 7 and may be his government’s original sin. In January 2023, his coalition announced its first major policy initiative: a sweeping overhaul of Israel’s judicial system that would dramatically disempower the country’s supreme court. This extraordinary reordering of Israeli democracy was not conceived through public debate and brokered consensus, but rather produced by a conservative think tank and rammed through the Parliament on a narrow party-line vote. Polls found that the plan was opposed by—say it with me—some two-thirds of the Israeli public. For a time, mass demonstrations against it paralyzed the country, in the largest sustained protest movement in Israeli history. Only the cataclysmic events of October 7 shelved the overhaul—and now Netanyahu’s coalition is bringing it back.
The prime minister’s determination to thwart the Israeli majority has also affected personnel decisions at the highest level. On November 5, 2024, Netanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Polls previously found that Gallant was the most popular elected politician in Israel. But the former army general had opposed the judicial overhaul, rejected Jewish settlement in Gaza, called for the territory to be returned to non-Hamas Palestinian governance, pushed for an earlier cease-fire deal, and repeatedly pressed to draft the ultra-Orthodox into the Israel Defense Forces. In other words, Gallant represented all of the consensus positions of Israeli society—and that’s why he had to go. On January 1, he resigned from Parliament entirely.
These are not cherry-picked, incidental issues. They are the fundamental fault lines in Israeli politics, because they will determine the country’s future. And on every single one, Netanyahu and his government are on the opposite side of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli public. Technically, that’s all within the rules of the game. The prime minister’s coalition may not have gotten a majority of the vote, but thanks to a quirk of the Israeli electoral system, it did get the majority of seats in Parliament, and unless it collapses, it can govern as it wishes until the next election, in 2026. But morally and practically, Netanyahu’s blatant disregard for the preferences of the public is a disaster for Israeli democracy, because it undermines faith in the system’s ability to deliver for its people.
Seen in this context, it’s no wonder that polls since before October 7 have consistently shown the current government losing the next election. The war has sublimated the rage seething beneath the surface to the needs of national security. But once Israelis stop fighting Hamas in Gaza, they will inevitably turn their sights on their own leadership.
