2024-04-05 02:43:21
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a serious problem. The largest demonstrations are taking place in the country since the start of the war with the radical Hamas movement last October. On Tuesday evening, police dragged the daughter-in-law of one of the Israeli hostages away from the prime minister’s private residence and arrested other protesters in Jerusalem.
The four-day protests against the government, aimed mainly against Prime Minister Netanyahu, lasted from the weekend. But on Tuesday night, they turned into chaos. The police used water cannons and sprays against the demonstrators, and people threw barricades at the police. There were several injuries on both sides.
According to analyst Irena Kalhousová, Israeli society is becoming active again and follows on from earlier mass anti-government demonstrations, which were directed against judicial reform, but stopped with the October attack.
“Now it has an even more intense charge, because it is no longer just about judicial reform and saving Israeli democracy, but about the fact that the current government committed the biggest security failure in the history of the state of Israel,” the director of the Herzl Center for Israeli Studies tells Aktuálně.cz.
This time, however, it is not only young liberal activists who have long been dissatisfied with the direction of the country, but also the relatives of the hostages that Hamas has been holding in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of October. “Until my Matan has day and night, neither will you,” said Einav Zangauker, the mother of one of the captives, at the beginning of the demonstration towards Netanyahu.
At the same time, she herself voted for and supported the current prime minister in the past. However, since the attack by Hamas, she has changed her position and the prime minister has now described her as “the pharaoh who sent the plague of the firstborn on us”, referring to the biblical passage that precedes the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt.
“On October 7th you failed in every possible way… You are an obstacle to the hostage deal,” she declared. According to The Times of Israel, the demonstrators are calling for negotiations with Hamas and the resignation of the government.
Claims that the Israeli government is taking advantage of the current situation to destroy Hamas at any cost are proliferating. “Netanyahu’s main priority is to stay in power as long as possible,” believes Kalhousová. Foreign observers have already written that as soon as the war in the Gaza Strip ends, so will Netanyahu.
End of US support
“Netanyahu is trying to argue to the protesters that the war is going on and the country must be united, but it is not united,” explains the Middle East expert. According to her, people no longer trust the prime minister and suspect that he is guided by personal interests, not the interests of the country, even when it comes to rescuing hostages and security issues.
You can also find out about international support. The premiere is increasingly criticized by US President Joe Biden and other leading US officials. At the same time, the United States is the most important ally of the Jewish state. Before Easter, however, for the first time in the UN Security Council, they proposed a resolution that demanded an immediate end to the fighting in Gaza, although they blocked similar efforts until then.
“It’s not that the US no longer agrees that Hamas needs to be destroyed, it’s about how, at what cost. For example, how Israel totally underestimated or deliberately created the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and so on.” comments Kalhousová.
At the same time, according to her, Biden supported Israel immediately after the attack, but Netanyahu does not want to back down now. He even warned that he intended to attack the city of Rafah, even if it meant the end of American military aid. Rafah represents the last refuge in the Gaza Strip, where over a million civilians fled before the fighting.
Early elections
The growing resentment of Israelis towards Netanyahu is also reflected in the election polls, in which the opposition leads. If the elections were held now, the current government coalition would not win a majority, according to the survey. According to Kalhousová, it is only a matter of time before the war cabinet, which the government established after the October attack, begins to fall apart and there will be early elections, already the sixth in a row.
He believes that the government will not withstand the situation, because sooner or later the top representatives of the army, secret services will start to resign and people will demand political accountability.
Benny Gantz, the minister of the current war cabinet and Benjamin Netanyahu’s biggest rival, also called for early elections. According to him, they should take place by September at the latest.
Video: Getting to the hospital is lucky, there is no water and the infection is spreading, says Cech about the helplessness in Gaza (full article on the video here)
Spotlight Aktuálně.cz – Stanislav Havlíček | Video: Team Spotlight