In October 2011 Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted by the Palestinian group Hamas and held for five years in the blockaded Gaza Strip, walked through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, accompanied by militants wearing suicide vests.
His release was widely celebrated across Israel; in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, so too was the agreed exchange of 1,027 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Foremost among them was Yahya Sinwar, who returned home to Gaza, eventually becoming Hamas’s most important leader in the territory. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, then in his second term, did face some criticism for the starkly asymmetric deal. The daily Jerusalem Post said at the time that “any such exchange, however humane to Shalit and his family, would imperil thousands of other Israelis”.
Twelve years later, after Hamas murdered 1,400 people on 7 October, there are not one or two Israelis captive in Gaza, but 220 – among them children, the elderly, and dual and foreign nationals. Netanyahu must now decide what price Israel is willing to pay for their safe return, if it is even possible while waging a war against Hamas that has killed more than 7,000 Palestinians.
Netanyahu is facing the same public pressure as he did with Shalit, but on a previously unimaginable scale. This disaster unfolded on his watch, and no matter what he does now, it is unlikely that the majority of Israelis will judge their already divisive and scandal-plagued leader kindly.
Wearing all black in a televised address to the nation last week, the prime minister said: “7 October was a black day in our history. We will get to the bottom of what happened on the southern border and the Gaza-envelope area. The debacle will be checked to the full … Everyone will have to give answers – including me.”
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) chief of staff, the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, and even Naftali Bennett, who was prime minister for 12 months after briefly booting Netanyahu from office in 2021, have all said they bear responsibility for 7 October, which unfolded because of Israeli over-reliance on technological superiority, and the underestimation of Hamas’s capabilities and goals. Those remarks, delivered last Wednesday, were the closest Netanyahu has come to an apology, or admitting that after nearly 20 years in office he is in any degree to blame for the unpreparedness with which the Hamas attack was met.
“Netanyahu is conducting a sophisticated survival campaign, in which no less energy is being invested than in prosecuting the war, and which is apparently scoring a certain success … In the media a dispute is raging over what type of commission of inquiry will be established to examine the failures – a state commission with teeth or a toothless governmental one,” Amos Harel, a leading military and defence analyst, wrote in the left-leaning daily Haaretz. “That’s a diversion. What’s important for Netanyahu is for any such commission to deliberate the issues for years, during which he will try to cling to the premiership on the grounds that the truth has yet to be clarified.”
It is true that whenever possible, Netanyahu likes to kick thorny issues down the road. At the moment his military is at full readiness for a ground invasion of Gaza, and some of his war cabinet and generals are raring to go – a limited first ground offensive appears to have begun on Friday night. The prime minister’s American allies have advised delay, worried that committing ground troops will end the possibility of hostage negotiations, and ignite a wider conflagration across the Middle East that could draw in Iran and make US troops in the region fair game.
His office was forced to put out a statement denying the reports of friction, which did not engender public confidence. “The prime minister, the defence minister and the IDF chief of staff are working in close and full cooperation … there is total and mutual trust,” they said.
Israel was already very divided into pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps, tensions exacerbated by his return to office last year at the head of a far-right coalition that has sought to undermine the country’s judicial system. Even loyal voters are now deserting his long-dominant Likud party in droves, with polls suggesting that four in five blame the government for the 7 October massacres and more than half want Netanyahu to resign. His ministers have been screamed at by furious members of the public on visits to hospitals and affected communities.
This year’s country-wide Saturday night protests against the judicial overhaul have been reborn as demonstrations focused on the fate of the hostages in Gaza, under the banner “bring them home now”. Many family members of the missing say that they have still had no contact or support from officials, even as the crisis enters its fourth week. Civil society has stepped in to fill the gaps, aiding evacuations, rehoming the displaced, and searching for those still unaccounted for. On Saturday night, as protesters gathered in central Tel Aviv, pressure was growing for the prime minister to meet with more of the hostages’ families.
Netanyahu is a master of political survival. But at this point in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, when Egypt and Syria launched a joint surprise attack that threatened the young state’s very survival, the IDF was already driving Egypt’s troops back over the Suez Canal, and shelling the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus.
What victory could or should look like for Israel in the Gaza Strip is not yet known – but Netanyahu will not be remembered for anything else.
