Party politics 'Victory' in Iran likely to help Netanyahu at home

When Benjamin Netanyahu described the opportunities for peace that Israel's successes in its brief war with Iran might bring, supporters took him at his word.

- Jason Burke

"This victory presents an opportunity for a dramatic widening of peace agreements. We are working on this with enthusiasm," Israel's prime minister said on Thursday in a prerecorded statement.

Critics of the 75-year-old leader saw something else.

"Whatever he does, he tries to turn everything to his advantage... This is a guy who never takes responsibility but only credit... Everything is opportunistic and everything is transactional," said Prof Yossi Mekelberg at Chatham House in London.

Quite how long Netanyahu will stay in power is now a burning question in Israel, as the country recovers from the rollercoaster of fear and elation of the past weeks.

With the Iran war apparently over, the conflict in Gaza has returned to the headlines. On the day after the US declared a ceasefire, seven Israeli soldiers died in an attack on an outdated armoured vehicle in the south of the devastated territory, prompting further urgent calls within Israel for the hostilities there to be brought to a close.

Back in the headlines, too, are the deep divisions in Israeli society and within the coalition Netanyahu put together after elections in November 2022. This is the most rightwing government ever seen in Israel, and has survived challenges since the 7 October 2023 Hamas raid into Israel, in which militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 251 hostage.

For Prof Tamar Hermann, a specialist in public opinion at the Israel Democracy Institute, the war has changed little in terms of Israel's polarised domestic politics.