Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a political backlash in Israel over the limited nature of Sunday’s airstrikes against Hezbollah, amid calls for a broader offensive in Lebanon.
Some of the harshest criticism has come from the far-right wing of the prime minister’s coalition, which is also increasingly divided over the status of Jerusalem’s holiest site.
The Israeli airstrikes and the subsequent Hezbollah rocket and drone strikes constituted the largest cross-border conflict since the two sides clashed in 2006, in terms of air sorties and munitions launched, but not in terms of casualties. Three Hezbollah and allied fighters were killed, and an Israeli marine was killed by fragments from an Israeli interceptor.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Sunday morning’s preemptive strikes had prevented Hezbollah from launching up to two-thirds of the rockets it had intended to fire at Israel. Israel also said it had shot down nearly all of Hezbollah’s drones.
Netanyahu warned that the airstrikes would not be “the end of the story,” but Israeli media reports citing military sources said no follow-up measures were planned.
The prime minister was widely accused Monday, both from the center and the right of the political spectrum, of being responsible for the limited aim of Sunday’s airstrikes, which disrupted a planned Hezbollah air assault but did nothing, critics said, to allow up to 80,000 residents of northern border towns, displaced from northern Israel since October, to return home.
Representatives of the displaced population, driven from their homes by Hezbollah’s bombings in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, said they would boycott meetings with government officials, accusing the coalition of prioritizing the defense of central Israel but not the north.
Ben Caspit, a columnist for the center-right Maariv newspaper, wrote: “For almost a year, the Galilee has been pulverized, ravaged and burned; tens of thousands of Israelis have been uprooted from their homes; and the entire country, which not so long ago was considered a regional superpower, has been humiliated.” He said Netanyahu had chosen the most prudent of the military options presented to him by his generals.
“It prevented and disrupted one of Hezbollah’s operational plans, but it did not change our strategic situation in the northern theater,” Caspit added, saying a broader air campaign would begin “to create conditions for the residents of the Upper Galilee to return to their homes and for Israel to restore its sovereignty over large swathes of its own territory.”
Benny Gantz, a retired general and former minister in Netanyahu’s coalition and one of his main rivals, called the airstrikes “too little, too late.”
In a video statement during a visit to northern communities, he said: “We must maintain the advantage of the initiative that has been taken and increase political and military pressure to push back Hezbollah and to bring the people of the north back home safely.”
Netanyahu’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joined the criticism.
“Israel must not be satisfied with a single preemptive intervention. We must wage a decisive war against Hezbollah that will eliminate the threat in the north and allow residents to return home safely,” Ben-Gvir said.
He was particularly critical of Gallant. The national security and defense ministers are engaged in a bitter public dispute over government policy, including the status of the holy site around the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which Jews call the Temple Mount.
Ben-Gvir continued his campaign to reverse Israel’s policy at the site since the capture of East Jerusalem in 1967, under which only Muslims would be allowed to pray at the site, while Jews would pray at the Western Wall.
Ben-Gvir violated that policy when he led Jewish prayers in the city last month and told Army Radio on Monday that Jews had equal status with Muslims.
“The rules on the Temple Mount allow prayer, period,” he said. “There is a directive that the laws must be equal between Jews and Muslims.”
He added that if it were up to him, there would be an Israeli flag and a synagogue on the Temple Mount.
The prime minister’s office issued a statement saying there had been no change in the status quo at the site, and other coalition members criticized Ben-Gvir for his inflammatory rhetoric, which they said was likely to spark an uprising among Palestinians and outrage in the Arab world.
“Undermining the status quo on the Temple Mount is an unnecessary and irresponsible act,” Gallant said. “Ben-Gvir’s actions endanger Israel.”
Interior Minister Moshe Arbel of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party called for Ben-Gvir to be removed from his police post, warning: “His lack of wisdom could cost lives.”
