After a long slide in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity from the start of the war on October 7, 2023 until earlier, a recent poll has put him back in first place over his rivals, both on whether he is considered a more suitable prime minister and and in terms of voting intention.

The poll conducted on behalf of state television showed that, if parliamentary elections were to be held in Israel last Thursday 8/22, Likud would emerge as the first party in the 120-member Knesset, winning 24 seats and thus surpassing, for the first time in ten months, the “Power Faction” of his former political partner, Benny Gantz.

Impressive is the further decline in the polling performance of the current leader of the centre-left official opposition, Yair Lapid, with his “There is a Future” party falling to fourth place in a row in seats. On the contrary, the right-wing Avigdor Lieberman and his party “Israel our Home” occupies the third place in poll seats. This is the most important polling rearrangement of the political scene since the beginning of the war, disproving persistent predictions of mainly American media, which considered it certain that the Netanyahu government would collapse at any moment and that Israel, despite being at war, would be dragged to the polls. Based on these data, it is deemed necessary to decode this recent and admittedly subversive poll. Netanyahu:

Why first again?

Hamas’s surprise attack on the morning of October 7 irreparably exposed the Israeli military, intelligence, state apparatus, Netanyahu’s government and himself. Then repeated denials of the army’s pompous announcements that certain areas of Gaza were “under absolute Israeli control” and with the war fronts increasing, trust in the government fell even further. At the same time, however, the criticism of Netanyahu by the Biden administration created an unprecedented “silent anti-Americanism” in Israel, which gradually strengthened the rallying tendencies in favor of Netanyahu, who was said to be standing up to Washington. Thus, the argument began to develop that “Israel can be sustained largely thanks to the US dollar, but the defense of its national security is more important than President Biden’s desire to be re-elected next November.”

This domestic, purely Israel-centric, reasoning began to erode in the eyes of the average Israeli the oppositional criticism expressed mainly by the center-left Yair Lapid, who, at one point, was forced to align with all other parties without exception, allied and not, in order to avoid the risk of a massive international recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Unfortunately, the criticism of American origin essentially weakened the opposition voices at home, with the result that the Lapid faction became the fourth political force (13 seats), marking the lowest poll performance in the last four months.

The operational successes that neutralized Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniya, Hezbollah’s top military figure Fuad Shukr, and the capture of the strategic “Philadelphia Axis” proved critical. All these developments, combined with Netanyahu’s steadfast resistance to diplomatic pressure from the White House, which finally “allowed” him to deliver his speech, invited by Congress, contributed decisively to his poll recovery.

Gantz defeated, Lieberman won

The loser of the new polling trends is Benny Gantz, on a personal and party level. His “Faction of Power” fell to 21 poll seats, losing its permanent lead of last decade, and Gantz trailed Netanyahu by 6% on the “prime ministerial suitability” question. Undoubtedly, this decline is due to his decision to leave the government of national unity. In hindsight, it is clear that Gantz should have taken into account that the average Israeli citizen is a soldier first and foremost, who does not want to see a career soldier suddenly withdraw from the battlefield. Since his departure, his public statements have begun to lose their former influence.

On the contrary, the right-wing advocate of the complete separation of Religion and State, Avigdor Lieberman, emerges victorious, collecting 14 poll seats. The ultra-Orthodox Jewish clergy’s insistence on denying conscription to theology students while the country is at war has angered the average Israeli voter, right-wing and non-right-wing. This situation boosted Lieberman’s ratings, giving his party its best polling performance in the last decade. On the other hand, the voters of the two ultra-orthodox religious Jewish parties of the coalition (“Bible Jewry” and “Shas” with 8 and 10 seats respectively), as was natural, rallied their sectarian votes, precisely because the privileged status of the exemption is threatened conscription and the receipt of social benefits.