Isaac Chotiner interviews political scientist Dahlia Scheindlin, a longtime expert on Israeli public opinion and analyst of the country’s domestic political scene:

You mentioned April as a turning point. That was when the war against Hamas broadened regionally—

It exactly lines up with April. I think we shouldn’t take the responsibility off of Hezbollah for its fateful decision, in the early morning hours of October 8th, to attack Israel—which basically internationalized or regionalized the conflict. But what happened in April? Israel assassinated a top commander of Iran’s Quds Force, in Damascus, and that set off a whole chain of events which led to the first ever Iranian strike on Israel and then Israel’s response. All of that was in April, and that’s when we saw Netanyahu’s polls beginning to rise. Then, over the summer, the war escalated with Hezbollah. Another big turning point was in September, when Israel set off the pager bombs and, shortly afterward, assassinated Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

But, even before that, in July, Israel killed Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, which was a huge sign to Israelis that the old Israel was back and could do anything anywhere. That gave Israelis a sense that the country was recovering. It’s all because of the regional front. I have come to the conclusion that Gaza is essentially a losing issue for Netanyahu. He can’t get out of Gaza because he has prioritized his coalition partners. I also don’t see him as a victim or trapped by his coalition partners. He put them there. But it’s not a good issue for him. The Israeli public feels more confident with the regional escalations and Israel’s perceived victories on those fronts, and that’s contributed to his rise.

You said that Gaza is a “losing issue” for Netanyahu. Do you mean that the public doesn’t seem to agree with him on Gaza? At least from a distance, it certainly seems like the country is willing to put up with the war there continuing and the incredibly awful humanitarian consequences, the hostages not returning, and so on.

After October 7th, people were shocked and stunned and paralyzed and afraid of rockets and trying to figure out where their dead bodies were and whether their kids were dead or captive. It was really very powerful, kind of a paralysis phase. There was a turning point, and it came pretty quickly, around the hostages. When people realized that the government was not prioritizing hostage release, even in November, 2023, they were already going out to the streets. They organized a huge march and rallied these civil-society networks that had been built up during the judicial-reform protests earlier that year. The sense of being stunned and afraid and traumatized gave way pretty quickly to social mobilization, partly because, by a tremendous coincidence, so much of that social mobilization had already been in place.

But, after a while, it became clear to Israelis that the government was not really going to prioritize the hostages or was always finding a way somehow not to get that deal. And the temptation is strong to blame Hamas, but ultimately Israelis started to get the impression—through lots of leaks, reporting, and analysis that would come out each time the negotiations collapsed—that Netanyahu’s not doing this. He’s not prioritizing this because he doesn’t want to stop the war, and he doesn’t want to stop the war because he doesn’t want to lose his coalition. Many people think it’s because he’s on trial for corruption. [The charges center on accusations of bribery and fraud.] I think that’s a little bit of a leap. He just wants to stay in power. [Continue reading…]