Anti-government protesters launch a prolonged demonstration calling for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu's government to resign and a general election in the wake of the deadly October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and the ensuing war in Gaza, in front of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem, March 31, 2024.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is facing challenges on multiple fronts, with his domestic support appearing to erode at a time when international fury and frustration over the war in the Gaza Strip have reached new heights.
The Israeli leader has come under sharper criticism from allies like the United States as the civilian death toll climbs in Gaza, and the Israeli military’s killing there this week of seven aid workers has heightened global anger.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that American support for Israel was not unconditional, in remarks that laid bare the growing divisions between Washington and Jerusalem.
In a phone call with Netanyahu, Biden called the strikes on relief workers and the broader humanitarian crisis in Gaza “unacceptable,” according to a White House statement.
“He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers,” the White House statement said. “He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”
Speaking to reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Blinken said, “With regard to our policy in Gaza, look, I’ll just say this: If we don’t see the changes that we need to see, there’ll be changes in our own policy.”
Within hours of the phone call, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council had released a statement announcing that, at Biden’s request, Israel would allow more aid crossings in Gaza. The statement said Israel had agreed to use the Ashdod port to direct aid into Gaza, to open the Erez crossing into northern Gaza for the first time since the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7 and to significantly increase deliveries from Jordan.
At home, Netanyahu, who has outlasted many predictions of his political demise, has been confronted with protests, divisions within his government and falling approval ratings in opinion polls.
On Wednesday night, Benny Gantz, a former general who is a key member of Netanyahu’s war Cabinet, heaped more pressure on the prime minister by calling for early elections. A popular political rival to Netanyahu, Gantz said that elections should be held in September — just before the one-year mark of the war. (New elections in Israel are not legally required until late October 2026.)
Elections in September “will leave us time to continue the security effort, and it will allow Israeli citizens to know that we will soon need to renew the trust between us,” he said at a news conference. “It will prevent the rupture among the people.”
Gantz’s remarks, which Israeli news websites featured prominently Thursday, underscored how government unity since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel was showing signs of strain nearly six months into the war. An opposition leader, Gantz crossed parliamentary lines after the attack to join the Netanyahu war Cabinet as an emergency measure.
Gantz did not suggest he would quit the war Cabinet, and if he were to, that alone would not topple the government; his centrist party is not part of Netanyahu’s far-right governing coalition, which holds 64 seats in the 120-member parliament. But it would dismantle the emergency wartime leadership team formed after Oct. 7, along with the air of solidarity it created, potentially creating more momentum for new elections.
Gantz’s words echoed the calls of thousands of anti-government protesters who filled the streets outside the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem this week in a four-day demonstration to demand early elections and Netanyahu’s ouster.
At the same time, Netanyahu has faced sharp criticism from his far-right coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, over any indication that he is hesitating in the war against Hamas or in the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Unlike Gantz, they have the power to make the government fall and to force elections by leaving the coalition.
The pressure comes as Biden administration officials are expressing more open frustration with Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In a tense phone call Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin criticized his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, over the deadly attack on the aid workers, including a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen. According to a Pentagon account of the call, Austin expressed “outrage” at the attack — a significant change in tone from their previous calls.
Despite the tough language, the Biden administration did not directly threaten to halt the flow of American munitions to Israel or place conditions on their transfer, as many congressional Democrats are now urging.
“I’m not going to preview any potential policy decisions coming forward,” John Kirby, a White House spokesperson, told reporters at a news conference Thursday. “What we want to see are some real changes on the Israeli side,” he said, including a significant increase in humanitarian aid, additional border crossings into Gaza and a reduction in violence against civilians and aid workers.
Israel has called the strike a tragic mistake that resulted from a “misidentification” but has not offered further details.
Another Israeli ally, Britain, is also coming under more pressure to curtail its support for Israel; three of the seven World Central Kitchen workers who were killed were Britons. On Wednesday, more than 600 lawyers and retired judges sent a letter to the British government, urging it to suspend weapons sales to Israel, arguing that they violated international law.
The letter cited the risk of famine in Gaza, a planned Israeli military assault on the crowded city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, and a finding by the U.N.’s top court that there was a “plausible risk” of genocide in Gaza.
Among the signatories were Brenda Hale, a former president of Britain’s Supreme Court; Jonathan Sumption and Nicholas Wilson, former justices on the court; and dozens of the country’s most prominent lawyers.
The international pressure to suspend military sales to Israel came as the Israeli military said that it was canceling leave for combat units and blocking GPS signals. The Israeli military did not explicitly cite the reason behind the moves, but Israeli newspapers noted that it came amid fears of an increased threat from Iran.
Israeli officials have also suggested that increased cross-border fighting between their forces and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia backed by Iran, could prompt a much larger military response by Israel than it has mounted so far.
Iranian leaders have vowed to punish Israel for killing top Iranian commanders this week in an airstrike in Syria. The attack was one of the deadliest in a decadeslong shadow war between the two enemies, and U.S. officials have voiced concerns that it could prompt retaliatory strikes against Israel or the United States.
Israel said Wednesday night that it had decided to mobilize reserve soldiers for its Aerial Defense unit. On Thursday, it said it was pausing leave for all combat units given “the latest situational assessment.”
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a military spokesperson, said Israel has also been disrupting GPS signals to intercept any threats.
“During the war, we dealt with a large number of threats launched toward Israel” including missiles and drones, he said at a news briefing Thursday, adding that “most of them were manufactured in Iran.”
As outrage continues to boil over the killing of the aid workers this week, their employer, World Central Kitchen, called for an independent investigation into the attack and asked Australia, Britain, Canada, the United States and Poland, whose citizens were among the victims, to join it in demanding an outside inquiry.
World Central Kitchen also called on Israel to preserve documentation related to the strikes, and pushed back on Netanyahu’s assertion that strikes, while “tragic” and unintentional, were something that “happens in war.”
“This was a military attack that involved multiple strikes and targeted three WCK vehicles,” the statement said. “All three vehicles were carrying civilians; they were marked as WCK vehicles; and their movements were in full compliance with Israeli authorities.”