‘Victory photo’: Will Beirut killings help embattled Netanyahu politically?
Al Jazeera
Netanyahu’s popularity is at an all-time low. The Beirut assassinations won’t fundamentally change that, analysts say.
It was a rocky start to 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Monday, January 1, the Supreme Court of Israel struck down a controversial law introduced by Netanyahu’s government in 2023, which curtailed certain powers of the top court and sparked widespread protests across the country.
Then, the following day, an attack on a Beirut apartment killed top Hamas officials. While Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack, analysts have said that it bears all the marks of a targeted Israeli strike. Will it help stall the fall in popularity of Israel’s long-serving leader?
The block to the judicial overhaul plan is a “significant setback” for Netanyahu and the Israeli far right that had invested “significant political energy on the topic”, Nader Hashemi, associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera.
For some Israelis, Hashemi said, Netanyahu’s longstanding insistence on the judicial changes had “divided Israeli society and made it weaker, allowing October 7th in the way it did”.
