Will the Netanyahu government survive the proposed hostage deal?
JERUSALEM – With a hostage deal apparently as good as done, although intense public scrutiny and the myriad of messages emanating from Israel, the United States, Hamas, and Qatar and others, has yet to produce concrete results, the prospect of the agreement’s signing has shifted some of the focus in Israel to what will happen within the country if it is finally done.
From a practical political perspective, two of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition partners – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir – whose removal of their 13 combined seats in the Knesset (out of a total of 120) from the government, would almost certainly trigger new elections in the near future.
The country had barely recovered politically from the five elections it held in four years, before it was plunged into its current and longest war following the Hamas-led massacres of Oct. 7, 2023. And while it is difficult to predict which way the electorate might go, the full effects of the war will likely not redound to Netanyahu’s benefit.
Indeed, if his right-wing abandons him, Netanyahu will either be forced to try and create a ruling coalition with ideological and personal opponents (although he has plenty of those on the right too), or be forced to call for new elections.
Hamas hostage deal could bring Netanyahu down & reshape Israeli politics. Critics say it’s political suicide, with far-right parties threatening to leave govt but supporters call it a necessary step to #bringthemhome
ANALYSIS | Canaan Lidor @hebrish https://t.co/y0tLYiyK9O
— Jewish News Syndicate (@JNS_org) January 15, 2025
Chiefly, Netanyahu’s most fervent right-wing antagonist is Ben Givr, who only a day or so ago baldly admitted he torpedoed potential hostage deals multiple times over the last year. Considering the outline of the deal which has been released does not seem significantly different from those previously outlined, some uncomfortable truths emerge.
Primarily, it shows how beholden Netanyahu was (presumably still is) to an individual whom he said he would never allow to sit in Israel’s government due to his extremism. After all the name of his party – Otzma Yehudit – Jewish Power – is based on asserting control Jewish control over the entirety of greater Israel, and very much including Judea and Samaria.
Even if we take it as a given that Ben Gvir has a deep ideological opposition to what amount to capitulation to terrorists, his pressure to not do a deal, has lengthened the war and the cost the lives of both hostages, and soldiers. And people are not being wise after the event; Ben Gvir was a known quantity, and some of the vociferous push-back against him was because large numbers of people thought him unfit for high office.
This situation also shows the limits of Netanyahu’s relationship with President-elect Donald Trump. And as an aside, it would be ironic if it was the Trump administration which caused Bibi’s fall, considering the Biden administration – and senior congresspeople, such as Chuck Schumer, D–N.Y. had so publicly and obviously tried to maneuver his ouster over the last four years.
The expectation in Israel had been that Biden’s White House staff and those at the State Department, who had proved both wrong and meddlesome, would be replaced with bureaucrats who would allow Israel to finish the job – as Vice President-elect J.D. Vance recently intimated on Fox News.
Netanyahu will point to the multiple victories the IDF and Mossad among others have scored over the months since the last hostage deal was thought to be close over the summer. These include the elimination of Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, the pager operation in Lebanon and Syria, and the extirpation of the entirety of the upper echelon of the Hezbollah leadership structure, and especially arch terrorist Hassan Nasrallah.
While Netanyahu has been in numerous political scrapes over the last two-and-a-half decades and managed to emerge from them, it feels as though there is real jeopardy attached to his current predicament. There are large swaths of the population who will never be able to forgive that Oct. 7 occurred on his watch, no matter his attempts to deflect to the intelligence community and the top brass of the IDF for their own failures – which were similarly and unforgivably catastrophic.
Perhaps the last words should be reserved for the hostage families. It is difficult to adequately put into words how on a macro level the kidnap of hostages, the youngest – Kfir Bibas, who if he is still alive will now be turning two – has ripped the country asunder.
So, how much more painful must it be for the families themselves whose most fervent desire is to see and hold their stolen loved ones again? Most of the families are in favor of the deal, however, there is a smaller group – haunted by the Gilad Shalit exchange deal in 2011, which released convicted murderer (of Palestinians) Yahya Sinwar, and ultimately led to the Oct. 7 massacre.