As Israeli military casualties mount in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. The Israeli prime minister’s popularity has plummeted and polls suggest that in an immediate election his rightwing Likud party would lose half its seats to a resurgent centrist opposition.
Voters have not forgotten the glaring failures that allowed Hamas to attack southern Israel from Gaza on 7 October, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 240. But the lack of tangible results from the Israeli offensive in Gaza that was supposed to bring “total victory” over Hamas is now important too.
