The facts in Gaza and the world did not change the Israeli mood. All the victims and this huge amount of destruction did not seem to push the Israelis to peace. This was confirmed by Dalia Sheindlin, a researcher from Tel Aviv at the Washington-based Century International Center for International Research and Policy, based on recent polls conducted inside Israel and others she conducted herself because she is an opinion poll expert and researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute.

Sheindlin wrote in Foreign Affairs: For more than twenty years, the right-wing parties that dominate Israel's political scene promised voters that the country was safer than it would be under any other policy, and most of them supported them. But on October 7, a Hamas attack shattered this idea. However, Israel has not changed. Although Israelis blame the country's leaders for the disastrous security failures surrounding the attacks, their basic political orientation is unlikely to change.

Israeli coup after the war

Scheindlin considered that the Israelis turning against their leaders during wartime is not a new thing. They were often angry with their government after the outbreak of war, regardless of the political orientation of the ruling parties. In 1973, Prime Minister Golda Meir was blamed for failing to anticipate the attack launched by Egypt that led to the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War and was eventually removed from office. As for the second intifada, or the violent Palestinian uprising that began in 2000, it led to the collapse of the government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who lost to Ariel Sharon by about 25 percentage points in 2001. Israel's war against the party in 2006 is another example. By August of that year, 63% of Israelis felt that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had failed to manage the war properly and should resign. At the beginning of 2007, Olmert was facing corruption investigations, and more than three-quarters of Israelis were dissatisfied with his performance, the same percentage that now wants Netanyahu to relinquish power (Olmert resigned in 2008 due to corruption accusations).

Despite widespread anger over Netanyahu government's judicial reform plan, majority of Jewish voters continue to identify with the right in opinion polls, according to survey

The expert who conducts the ongoing joint Israeli-Palestinian public opinion poll in cooperation with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research ruled out that Netanyahu will remain in his position. She pointed to an opinion poll conducted on November 22 and 23, after the government announced a hostage release deal that could have strengthened its position, which showed that the ruling coalition would lose 23 of its 64 seats in the Knesset (out of 120 seats). She pointed to another poll which showed that Likud would lose nearly half of its 32 seats in the Knesset, and that more than three-quarters of Israelis believe that Netanyahu should resign, after or even during the war. Last April, only 37% of Israelis supported the prime minister. Since the attacks, that number has dropped to 26 percent. By mid-November, nearly 52% favored former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, Netanyahu's main political rival and current partner in the emergency war government.

Netanyahu's departure will not bring about change

Scheindlin stressed that Netanyahu's departure will not bring about a fundamental change in Israeli policy.

She added: “Repeatedly, in times of war or extreme violence, Israelis have moved to the right. When Israel elected the right-wing Likud Party for the first time in 1977, it legitimized nationalist and ultra-Orthodox ideologies as an important force in Israel. During the 1980s, two major conflicts helped push further. From Israelis to the Right: The 1982 War and the First Intifada, which began in 1987. This shift is reflected in poll numbers: in 1981, poll researchers found that among Jews (no general polls included Arabs at the time) 36% of respondents said they intended to support a right-wing party. By 1991, the percentage had risen to about half of all Jewish Israelis. The 1992 elections were the last time Israelis voted left after a conflict with the Palestinians. Despite the signing of the government of Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin The Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat, but extremists on both sides quickly thwarted the process. 

Before Rabin's assassination in November 1995, about half of Israeli Jews said they were right-wing, compared to 28% who said they were left-wing, and 23% described themselves as Centrists. In the 1996 elections, although opinion polls showed sympathy after the assassination for Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres, voters went on to elect Netanyahu, who ran on a right-wing populist platform opposed to the "peace process."

Scheindlin added that during the first decade of this century, Israelis shifted more to the right. It was characterized by suicide bombings, Israel's re-conquest of Palestinian cities in Operation Defensive Shield, then the 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel's withdrawal from Gaza that contributed to Hamas' victory in the Palestinian elections, its violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, and Israel's blockade of the Strip. Rocket fire from Gaza into Israel became more frequent, culminating in Operation Cast Lead, Israel's massive invasion of Gaza in 2008-2009. The Israelis then voted to reinstate Netanyahu, and the Likud Party took an increasingly nationalist, populist direction.

By 2011, more than half of Israeli Jews described themselves as right-wing, more than three times the number who said they were left-wing, a number that had fallen to 15%.

Scheindlin stressed that Netanyahu's departure will not bring about a fundamental change in Israeli policy

During the 2000s, as Israel engaged in numerous conflicts with Hamas, including its expanded operation in Gaza in 2014, Israeli Jewish voters' support for right-wing ideology steadily increased. The index was around 50% in the middle of the decade, and had reached 60% by 2019. At this point, Israeli Arabs, about 20% of the Israeli population (but about 17% of adult voters), were polled regularly, and declining levels of Their support for right-wing ideology led to a decrease in the overall average. However, even including Israeli Arabs, about half of the total Israeli public consider themselves right-wing. (Israeli Arabs have boosted the overall left to about 18% of the total population in most polls in recent years.) The years preceding the current war reinforced this path.

Despite widespread anger over the Netanyahu government's judicial reform plan, a majority of Jewish voters continued to identify with the right in opinion polls, according to a survey conducted by the Hebrew University's aChord Center for Social Psychology Research, just five days before the Hamas attacks, which found that Two-thirds of Israeli Jews identify with the right (either “hard right” or “moderate right”), while ten percent identify with the left. This means that for every left-wing Israeli Jewish voter, the trend was towards approximately seven right-wing voters. It would therefore not be surprising if Israelis move more to the right in the wake of the worst episode of violence against Israelis since the country's founding. Despite massive popular dissatisfaction with Netanyahu's leadership, concerns about political instability are likely to allow him to remain in power for now. Even if Netanyahu is eventually removed from power, the pollster rules out that Israel will take a different ideological path.

According to a poll on November 24, it was found that if the elections were held now, the center-right National Unity Party led by Gantz would obtain 43 seats, that is, 11 more seats than Likud in the 2022 elections and more than double what Likud will get now. Sheindlin concluded by saying that one of the reasonable outcomes of the current crisis is Israel's transition to a new government led by Gantz, who, with his long military record and the presence of former members of the Likud Party in his party, enjoys the legitimacy of the right and will want to preserve it.