Some 60% of Israelis want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toresign from his post, according to an Israeli Channel 12 poll that was released on Wednesday.
Results show that 31% believe Netanyahu should remain prime minister while 9% did not know. The poll reveals major differences across the political spectrum. A whopping 94% of opposition voters believe that Netanyahu should resign compared to only 24% among coalition voters.
The poll also showed that if former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett were to run in the next election, Netanyahu’s current coalition government would lose its majority and fall to merely 48 seats if elections were held today. To form a government in Israel, at least 61 seats in the Knesset are required to hold a majority and secure the coalition
Furthermore, the poll reveals that a large majority of Israel – 75%, support the establishment of a state commission to probe the failures to prevent the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping of 251 people from southern Israeli border communities. However, Netanyahu is currently reluctant to establish such a state commission, arguing that Israel first needs to focus on completing the war against Iran and its terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah.
The poll predicted that in an election with a new Bennett-led party, Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party would fall from its current 32 seats to 24 seats. Bennett’s party would also receive 24 seats while opposition leader Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party would only receive 11 seats.
The former Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s National Unity party would receive nine seats just like the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas party.
The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party and the secular Yisrael Beytenu parties would each receive eight seats, followed by seven seats for the right-wing Otzma Yehudit and five seats each for the Arab parties Hadash-Ta’al and Ra’am.
The poll also predicted that the right-wing Religious Zionism party, which is led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and is part of the Netanyahu-led coalition government, would fail to secure the minimum number of seats to enter the next Knesset.
The poll also indicated that Netanyahu’s coalition parties would fare better if Bennett did not participate in the next election. In such a scenario, Netanyahu’s Likud would emerge as the largest party with 25 seats. Gantz’s National Unity would become the second largest party with 16 seats, followed by Lapid’s Yesh Atid with 14 seats. Furthermore, Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party would enter the Knesset with four seats.
While a majority of the Israeli public appears to want Netanyahu to resign as prime minister, Bennett is the only prime minister candidate that is more popular than Netanyahu. Some 36% of the Israelis prefer Bennett compared to 34% backing Netanyahu. The opposition leaders Gantz and Lapid were both less popular in the poll than Netanyahu.
In June 2021, Bennett became prime minister and led a diverse coalition consisting of religious, secular, right-wing, centrist, left-wing parties as well as the Arab Ra’am party. However, the fragile coalition collapsed after a year and Bennett announced a break from politics.
Following the Hamas Oct. 7 massacre, the private citizen Bennett became a vocal and effective spokesperson for Israel in international media, which increased his popularity in Israel. In June 2024, Bennett overtook Netanyahu in a poll for the first time since the October attack.
The latest poll also reveals that 64% of Israelis believe that the Shin Bet intelligence chief Ronen Bar should resign due to the events that led to the Oct. 7 failure. Only 18% of the respondents said that Bar should remain in his post.
Bar recently signaled that he intends to resign but only after all the remaining hostages have returned to Israel.
"As soon as I see this happening, I will want to pass the baton to one of my two excellent deputies," Bar stated according to the Israeli news outlet N12.
Source: allisrael.com
Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
