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When Israel’s powerful trade union federation called a general strike last year in an effort to stop Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans for a controversial judicial overhaul, he was forced to delay the project — his first concession in a bitter battle in which he had ignored months of mass protests.
But if his opponents hoped history would repeat itself on Monday, they were disappointed. Faced with another strike and huge protests calling for him to do a deal to free the Israeli hostages held by Hamas, even if it meant ending the war with the militant group, Netanyahu doubled down.
In a defiant press conference on Monday night, the Israeli prime minister insisted that the war would only end “when Hamas no longer rules Gaza”, and repeated his refusal to withdraw troops from the border between Gaza and Egypt, which is widely seen as one of the main obstacles to a deal.
“When we have our boot on [Hamas’s] skull, that’s when they want us to make concessions?” he said of those who oppose his stance. “When [Hamas] understands we’re not ending the war, they’ll give in.”
Analysts said part of the reason the latest strike called by the Histadrut federation did not force Netanyahu’s hand was that, rather than presenting a united front, it laid bare Israel’s deep divisions.
While liberal cities such as Tel Aviv took part, more conservative ones, such as Jerusalem, did not. The strike’s impact was further weakened when a court ruled on Monday afternoon that it should end early, arguing that it was being called for political ends.
The mass protests that accompanied the strike betrayed similar fissures. Triggered by anger at the killing of six hostages held by Hamas, they were the biggest public display of support for a hostage deal so far, bringing hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets.
But analysts said their numbers were still largely drawn from the liberal sections of Israeli society that protested against Netanyahu and the judicial overhaul that his rightwing coalition was pushing last year, rather than from within his own camp.
“Actions like this [strike] unite rightwing people and parties because they understand that if they don’t stick together, they will lose control of the country. So I think it was counterproductive,” said Roni Rimon, a strategy expert who was Netanyahu’s campaign manager during the 2009 election.
“The only thing that can topple the government are disputes within the government and not outside pressure.”
In recent months, those disputes have become increasingly public. The coalition made up of Netanyahu’s Likud, two ultrareligious and two extreme-right parties has feuded over issues ranging from the conscription of ultraorthodox men, to the rules governing Jerusalem’s sensitive holy sites.
But the most intense fights have come over the war triggered by Hamas’s devastating October 7 attack on Israel. As the fighting has ground on, Israel’s military, security chiefs and defence minister Yoav Gallant have argued increasingly forcefully that a deal with Hamas is the best way of securing the release of the roughly 100 hostages still held in Gaza.
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But the two ultranationalist parties headed by finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir remain implacably opposed to any deal that ends the war before Hamas’s destruction. They have threatened to pull out of the coalition and force early elections — which polls suggest the coalition would lose — if Netanyahu yields.
Those disagreements again spilled into public view after the recovery of the bodies of the six hostages on Sunday, with Gallant demanding the government reverse its position on keeping troops on the border between Egypt and Gaza, and Smotrich accusing him of seeking a “surrender deal”.
“Last year Netanyahu could stop the judicial overhaul and his government would survive,” said Rimon. “This time, if he gives up, it means going to elections and losing control of the country.”
Nadav Strauchler, a political strategist who has previously worked with Netanyahu, said that as long as doing a hostage deal risked the survival of his coalition and military strategy — of which the prime minister is convinced — he would not do so.
But he also said that if internal tensions brought the coalition to the point of collapse, Netanyahu might want an “achievement” that he could put to the public in the event of early elections, adding this could take the form of a hostage deal or a military success in the war of attrition with the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah taking place on Israel’s northern border.
“At the end of October, beginning of November, when the Knesset returns, and there are elections in the US, things will be more complex for him,” said Strauchler. “So I think he wants to accomplish something big before November. It could be a deal — but not on these conditions. Or it could be something in the north.”
In the meantime, however, few observers expect Netanyahu to change tack. Ending the fighting now would leave him facing a reckoning with the failures of October 7 without being able to retort that he had responded by totally destroying Hamas, said Aviv Bushinsky, a political analyst who was Netanyahu’s chief of staff in the early 2000s.
“At the moment, Netanyahu is the one being blamed for the October 7 tragedy and leading a war that did not achieve the ‘ultimate victory’ he promised,” he said. “Under these circumstances, Netanyahu — who defines himself as Mr Security — cannot afford it.”
Data visualisation by Clara Murray and Ian Bott
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