By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

How Hamas Has United Israelis Behind The War

In the months before Hamas’s heinous October 7 attacks, Israeli society was more polarized than ever before. Efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government to ram through antidemocratic reforms had provoked the largest and most sustained protests the country had ever seen. By this past summer, polls indicated that 45 percent of the public thought that the country was on the brink of a violent civil war.

Since then, the attacks and the subsequent government decision to launch an all-out campaign against  Hamas have united Israelis behind the war. Thus, they have shown overwhelming support for the twin goals of returning the hostages and toppling the terrorist regime in the Gaza Strip. Yet the polarization has hardly disappeared: even now, at the height of the fighting, the trust that Israelis place in the government is at an all-time low, and the rally-round-the-flag effect has been limited to support for the Israel Defense Forces and their mission to defeat Hamas. What does this mean for the country and its ability to shape a stable postwar order?

In the wake of October 7, it has become a truism that nothing in Israel will ever be the same. Although it is impossible to predict the outcome and the long-term effects of the war, many have noted that Israel’s political makeup and security doctrines will almost certainly undergo profound changes. The catastrophic intelligence failures that preceded the attacks are bound to have far-reaching repercussions on Israel’s security and defense establishment.  Israel will need to reframe its whole approach to the Palestinian conflict. Many have also speculated that the current leadership, led by Netanyahu, will have to step down at the end of the war.

But given the social and political turmoil in Israel in the months preceding the war, the changes could well go beyond that. The possible removal of Netanyahu will have huge consequences, including for many of the issues that dominated his alliance with the religious parties on the far right. It also could provide a rare opportunity to reshape Israel’s social contract. The vast majority of Israelis now realize that surrounded as they are by threats on all sides, they must come together in their sense of purpose and the shared recognition of the sacrifices they need to make to defend the country. After a dangerous brush with illiberal, authoritarian rule, Israelis will not be content to return to the status quo. They will demand firm guarantees that a temporary majority cannot overturn democracy and constitutional safeguards that will enshrine its citizens’ individual rights.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walking to a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, December 2023

 

From Division To Disaster

Two different developments contributed to Israel’s unreadiness for the catastrophe of 7 October. One, of course, was the government’s terrible misreading of the country’s security. At the start of 2023, Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners were confident that Israel had contained Hamas. They assumed that the task of governing the more than two million residents of Gaza had moderated the radical Islamist movement and steered its focus toward filling potholes and away from cross-border attacks. More importantly, Israel’s military establishment was convinced that even if Hamas did try to attack, it would be thwarted by the billion-dollar high-tech security barrier that had been constructed at the end of 2021 along the 1949 armistice line. That, as a consequence, provided a false sense of security among the IDF brass regarding the situation along Israel’s border with Gaza. These assumptions helped produce the devastating security lapses that made the Hamas attacks so deadly.

However, the judicial overhaul that Netanyahu tried to plow through was no less significant. Often understood merely as a power grab aimed at helping the prime minister avoid jail time for corruption, Netanyahu’s proposed changes would have seriously degraded Israel’s democratic foundations. By giving the governing coalition a veto over the Supreme Court, the reform would effectively end the country’s independent judiciary—and to many Israelis, it looked like a way to ensure that the country’s extreme right settler and ultra-Orthodox sectors retain extraordinary privileges and influence. Although they constitute only about 13 percent of Israel’s overall population, the ultra-Orthodox are prominently represented in the governing coalition. And to the consternation of a majority of Israelis, the ultra-Orthodox have long refused to serve in the IDF or to enter the workforce at anything close to the same rate as the rest of the country. The judicial reforms would have allowed them to continue to receive special subsidies and economic incentives, even as their contribution to national security and the Israeli economy is negligible.

Given the widespread concerns about their anti-democratic implications, the judicial reforms met with enormous public opposition almost from the outset. In February, just weeks after the plans were introduced, a full two-thirds, or 66 percent, of the Israeli public, opposed the idea of an override clause that would allow the majority in Parliament to overturn Supreme Court rulings. A similar proportion, or 63 percent, were against politicizing the judicial selection process, the other main component of the government’s plan. By June, after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was fired by Netanyahu for warning that the overhaul was dangerously weakened the IDF’s readiness—a firing that the prime minister was subsequently forced to reverse amid massive public protest—even supporters of Likud, Netanyahu’s own party, turned against the plan. In polling at the time, more than 60 percent of Likud voters said they were interested only in reforms that the opposition would sign on to, or that the overhaul should be halted completely.  

By summer, the judicial overhaul had caused widespread disaffection in the military. Large numbers of reservists threatened to refuse to show up for voluntary service if the government went through with the plan. In July, a protest letter signed by more than a thousand Air Force reservists stated that “legislation that allows the government to act in an extremely unreasonable manner will harm the security of the State of Israel, will cause a loss of trust and violate [our] consent to continue risking [our lives].” Yet Israel’s leaders seemed to think that they could afford to promote divisive and dangerous policies, even if it polarized the electorate and weakened national security in the process. As with its assumptions about Hamas, the government’s determination to flout overwhelming public opposition to its judicial overhaul plans proved to be fatally misguided.

 

Coming Home To Roost

The many political and security failures that contributed to October 7 are sure to have far-reaching repercussions. Already, the IDF Chief of Staff, the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, and the director of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, have taken responsibility for the security lapses that took place on their watch, and all seem likely to resign as soon as the war in Gaza ends. Yet so far, the prime minister himself has been conspicuously silent. He has refused to accept responsibility for the lapses on October 7, and when he does speak about the government’s response, he weighs his words cautiously, evidently preparing for a likely official commission of inquiry into what went wrong and trying to find a way to hang on to power. Yet it is inconceivable that the heads of Israel’s security agencies will all be held accountable in the aftermath of the war while Netanyahu himself avoids any consequences.

Nonetheless, it is hard to envision a man who has clung to power after multiple criminal indictments resigning on his own volition. This means that opposition parties in the Knesset will need to be joined by at least five members of the current coalition either to vote for an alternative prime minister or cabinet or to pass legislation to dissolve the Parliament and set early elections. Although for now, either scenario may seem unlikely, the end of the war, depending on its outcome and the perceptions about it, could well hasten Netanyahu’s political end.

The precariousness of Netanyahu’s support has become increasingly clear in opinion polling. In the days after October 7, both Netanyahu and the IDF leadership had low approval as people reacted to the security failures. But after acknowledging responsibility and then taking decisive action on the battlefield, the military brass began to receive higher marks. By contrast, Netanyahu’s ratings have continued to decline—including among those who voted for his coalition in the elections a year ago. For instance, in a survey published on October 31, just ten percent of self-identified right-wing voters—Netanyahu’s core supporters—said that they trusted the prime minister to manage the war, whereas 41 percent trusted the IDF leadership. (Another 29 percent said that they trusted “both to the same degree” and 20 percent said they trusted neither.)

In other words, although Israelis have broadly endorsed the war effort, the prime minister has never been more unpopular, with only 22 percent of Jewish Israelis giving him high grades for his performance during the war. In fact, just one in five Jewish Israelis say that they trust his government—the lowest measurement our institute has seen since we began measuring trust in institutions 20 years ago. These stark findings suggest that the end of the war could produce extraordinary momentum for change—not only in who leads the country but in how the country is governed and what issues are focused on.

 

Protecting Rights, Not The Far Right

What might the removal of Netanyahu from the equation bring? For one thing, the prime minister’s party, Likud, already hurting in the polls, is likely to suffer a collapse in support. Some of his coalition partners on the extreme right are likely to enjoy a similar fate. More to the point, many of the issues that dominated Netanyahu’s quest for power—his judicial overhaul, the veto power enjoyed by the ultra-Orthodox parties—will be among the first that are targeted for change by a new leadership.

Take the effort to formalize military exemption for the ultra-Orthodox. The flagship initiative of the religious parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, was a sweeping bill that would legalize the existing reality according to which all yeshiva students are exempt from military service. The bill is now, for all practical purposes, dead on arrival. After the enormous losses incurred by the IDF in the war in Gaza—and given that almost no ultra-Orthodox are represented in the country’s rapidly filling military cemeteries—it is highly unlikely that the Knesset would consider such a bill.

Similarly, a disproportionate amount of the state budget is currently funneled to ultra-Orthodox schools that refuse to teach a core curriculum and which therefore leave their graduates unable to enter the modern workforce. Such largesse will be politically unjustifiable in what promises to be a tough postwar economy. And then there is the deeply unpopular judicial overhaul. The plan was already taken off the table as a condition of forming the emergency war cabinet with Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party, and it is difficult to imagine a future government succeeding in reviving it.

But the country has the opportunity to do more than simply reject policies that benefit a narrow segment of the far right. Since 2018, Israel has gone through unprecedented political and societal turmoil: first, an electoral crisis that led to five elections in less than four years and resulted, in late 2022, in the most right-wing government in Israeli history; then, an institutional crisis, with the Netanyahu government’s unprecedented challenge to judicial independence during the first half of 2023; and finally, the worst attack on Israeli soil in the country’s history, followed by the war that is unfolding now. Emerging from these traumatic events, Israel will urgently need to bring together its population and rebuild the country’s democratic foundations. One way it can do this is to establish a new social contract based on broadly supported government policies that can both find areas of common ground among Israel’s diverse Jewish constituencies and also safeguard the rights of the country’s minorities.

A banner depicting Israel's Declaration of Independence at a protest in Tel Aviv, September 2023

For example, a successor government could end the practice of putting the burden of defending—and dying for—the country only on certain Israelis. This would mean a much smaller number of exemptions to military service, allowing more women in combat positions (a trend that has already begun), economic incentives for those serving in key military positions, and a broader commitment by all members of society to serve in a meaningful form of national service. On the economic front, those who refuse to contribute productively to the economy should no longer be given unlimited social benefits supported by the taxes of working and serving Israelis.

Just as important, the country will need to work toward a new constitutional framework. At the time of Israel’s founding, its 1948 Declaration of Independence called for a written constitution, but fundamental disagreements on the defining characteristics of the country have for decades prevented its realization. As a result, 75 years later, Israel not only lacks a formal constitution but also has few checks and balances on its government: there is no bill of rights, no presidential veto, no second chamber of Parliament, and no federal distribution of power. For decades, only the Israeli Supreme Court has served as a reliable check on the unlimited power of whoever happens to hold a temporary majority in Parliament. Over the years, a series of Basic Laws were passed by the Knesset that established a number of rights that have been recognized by the Supreme Court as a constitution in the making. But the events of the past year have proved them woefully insufficient in the face of a government determined to ram through measures that benefit only its own supporters.

In fact, Israelis broadly agree that the country should redefine the rules of the game and expand its constitutional framework. Even before the war, nearly 70 percent of the population supported a constitution in the spirit of the Israeli Declaration of Independence that secures a democracy “based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel” while also ensuring “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or gender.” Such a constitutional framework is important in any democracy. Still, it is particularly vital in a country that seeks to maintain its Jewish identity and defend itself against multiple enemies without sacrificing bedrock democratic principles.

Israelis across the political spectrum have made clear that the country’s governments should no longer move forward with narrow partisan policies that could threaten the basic fiber of the country. Almost every public opinion poll since the outset of the war shows Israelis gravitating toward the parties of the center and leaders who stress national unity, and away from politicians on both extremes. What happened in the months before the war was a reckless distraction for a country that was already facing more external threats than any other democracy in the world, as well as a demographic shift that has led to a shrinking portion of society shouldering ever larger economic and security burdens.

 

Democracy Redefined

Amid one of the greatest tests in the country’s history, Israelis have a series of important opportunities. Rebuilding and strengthening Israeli democracy will be a long and difficult process. But if new leadership emerges after the war that can begin to repair the country’s frayed unity, the catastrophe that began on October 7 could also become the moment when Israelis are pushed to finally rectify the mistake made by Israel’s founders in 1948 when they chose to avoid the most fundamental questions relating to Israel’s character.

New leadership could bring Israelis together in a grand project of national renewal that would include a new social contract that all sectors of society would respect. This would allow Israel to rebuild its defenses that were so badly compromised in this war and also to set the stage for more enduring and broad-based economic prosperity. By codifying this new social contract into a long-overdue constitutional document, Israelis can also protect the country from future threats to Israeli democracy.

Of course, such steps will face significant hurdles, starting with gaining the people’s trust by going back to them for a vote of confidence in new leadership. Getting Netanyahu to agree to this will be hard. Although he is under indictment and deeply unpopular, the prime minister is also the shrewdest political operator in the Western world and has led Israel for 13 of the past 14 years. He will not leave the stage willingly. Moreover, there are other powerful political actors in his coalition who would have much to lose if such changes were implemented and who would fiercely resist them. Success will require the various factions in Israel’s broad array of parties to rise above sometimes stark differences and come together for the greater good of the country at a time of national crisis.

But given the multiplying threats against Israel—both from enemies without and from antidemocratic forces within—the risk of inaction is acute. In ushering in a new constitutional order, Israel has the rare opportunity to complete one of the great unrealized goals of its founders. If Israelis can achieve this lofty goal in the wake of the worst national catastrophe since then, they will have successfully turned the terrible tragedy of October 7 into a historic opportunity to not only defend the Jewish state but also to secure its democratic future for generations to come.

 

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