After Bibi Netanyahu's time looks up-but what would follow is less clear

For years, the newspaper Israel Hayom has been known as the "Bibiton". A Hebrew portmanteau, it means "the paper of Bibi", the nickname for Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was founded by the late billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as the mouthpiece for Netanyahu.

- Peter Beaumont

Last week, the head of news at the paper, Uri Dagon, signalled a breaking of the ranks, calling on the prime minister to "lead us to victory and then go", taking aim at the "nonstop political bickering while the war is raging". In Israel's fractured and fractious politics, it signalled the cohering of a rare agreement across party lines: the political era of Netanyahu was staggering to its bitter end.

He is blamed widely for the security failures that allowed thousands of Hamas terrorists to pour across the border from Gaza and commit an atrocity unrivalled in the state of Israel's history. Now Israelis are consumed with the notion of the "days after". If the first day after describes what happens in Gaza should Hamas be toppled, the second looks to be an anticipated reset of the country's politics, post Netanyahu. Few except his most ardent loyalists see him surviving.

Many point to the epochal changing of the guard following the 1973 Yom Kippur war that marked the fall from grace of Golda Meir and the end of the dominance of the Labor party, formerly Mapai, that had governed Israel since its founding in 1948.