{"id":101791,"date":"2026-05-07T06:33:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T06:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/101791\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T06:33:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T06:33:14","slug":"anger-over-handling-of-hezbollah-fight-could-put-netanyahus-northern-support-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/101791\/","title":{"rendered":"Anger over handling of Hezbollah fight could put Netanyahu’s northern support at risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defending his decision to accept a US-brokered ceasefire with Hezbollah in mid-April, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that the threat posed by the terror group had been largely eliminated. Over the past two and a half years Israel had removed the threat of infiltration and anti-tank fire from the group and eliminated roughly 90% of its rocket arsenal, he boasted.<\/p>\n

Yet the prime minister also hedged, promising that the campaign against the terror group was far from over.<\/p>\n

A savvy political operator, Netanyahu likely had no illusions about the popularity of the decision to halt fighting against Hezbollah. By all accounts, he had not entered the ceasefire willingly, but rather under intense pressure from Washington.<\/p>\n

Washington had leaned on Netanyahu after Iran insisted that it would only hold talks with the US on ending the war there if Israel halted its attacks in Lebanon. After initially resisting calls for it to pull back its campaign against Hezbollah \u2014 the terror group had begun firing at Israel in response to the US-Israeli joint strikes on Iran \u2014 Israel\u00a0 agreed to silence the guns on its northern border.<\/p>\n

Faced with the unenviable task of defending the ceasefire, Netanyahu tried to give it a positive spin, framing it as a strategic opening for both diplomacy and continued military pressure.<\/p>\n

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The ceasefire has since largely unraveled, though fighting remains at a lower pitch than before the truce was announced in mid-April, and the IDF has continued to limit the areas in which it carries out strikes.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tA view of a house damaged by a missile fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon in Misgav Am in northern Israel, May 1, 2026. (Michael Giladi\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

For many in the north who remain under fire, the fighting exposed as hollow the claims that Hezbollah\u2019s capabilities were significantly degraded, while the ceasefire, albeit paper-thin, undermined the idea that Netanyahu could withstand pressure from US President Donald Trump and make decisions in Israel\u2019s best interests.<\/p>\n

Rising anger among northerners over how the war is being handled has the potential to weaken Netanyahu and his Likud party\u2019s standing in a region normally considered a bastion of support.<\/p>\n

Looming on the horizon are Knesset elections, which many already see as a referendum on the government\u2019s response to October 7 and the subsequent wars in Lebanon and Iran.<\/p>\n

Widespread disappointment<\/p>\n

The north has traditionally been a Likud stronghold, with the party taking 49.47 percent of the vote in Kiryat Shmona, 42.49% in Afula, and 38.47% in Nahariya in 2022. Overall, parties belonging to Netanyahu\u2019s bloc were supported by 74.77%, 69.27%, and 57.23% of voters in these cities, respectively, during the last election.<\/p>\n

According to a mid-April poll<\/a> by the Israel Democracy Institute, almost half (48%) of those in the north said that they were unhappy with the ceasefire, with 79% expressing support for \u201ccontinuing the fighting even at the cost of friction with the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

A separate poll conducted by Hebrew University\u2019s Agam Labs researcher Nimrod Nir on April 23-24 found 41.1% of Israelis nationwide opposed to the ceasefire in Lebanon. Fewer than one-quarter supported the ceasefire, and among Jewish respondents, only 15% backed it.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tResidents of Kiryat Shmona protest against the ceasefire with Hezbollah outside the United States embassy in Jerusalem, April 19, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel\/ Flash90)<\/p>\n

According to the survey, 66.1% of the 1,325 Israelis polled were either somewhat (18%) or very (48.1%) dissatisfied with Netanyahu\u2019s performance during the military campaigns in Iran and Lebanon. Among coalition voters, 30% were dissatisfied with Netanyahu\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time we see that the Israeli public has the levels of pessimism we saw after October 7,\u201d Nir told The Times of Israel. \u201cThings have changed completely. Now 66% are pessimistic, while only about a third are optimistic. People have the sentiment that this war is a failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study found that\u00a0\u201conly about half of Israelis believe Iran has weakened as a result of the campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

The situation in Lebanon \u201cwill be a key issue for the people of the north\u201d in the upcoming vote, which is scheduled for October, said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst and fellow at The Century Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf elections were held today, it would not reflect particularly well\u201d on Netanyahu, she told The Times of Israel.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tPollster and analyst Dahlia Scheindlin. (Oren Ziv)<\/p>\n

Who they support will ultimately end up depending on the diplomatic<\/a> and security situation going into October, she predicted.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven more than the rest of the country, the north thinks that the best way to deal with the situation is to keep fighting and keep fighting more strongly,\u201d Scheindlin said following a visit to Kiryat Shmona.<\/p>\n

The city, which sits in the Galilee Panhandle just a few kilometers from the Lebanon border, has been among the hardest hit in both the recent round of violence and the year of hostilities in 2023-2024. Many evacuated from the hardscrabble town during that initial conflict and large numbers have yet to return.<\/a><\/p>\n

Following the announcement of the ceasefire, hundreds of residents protested<\/a> outside the Prime Minister\u2019s Office and the United States embassy in Jerusalem \u2014 while Kiryat Shmona Mayor Avichai Stern, a member of Likud, accused<\/a> the government of selling out the north\u2019s security.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe elected our government\u2026 full-on right wing for full-on security,\u201d Stern told the Kan national broadcaster. \u201cIn practice, we see that our security is up for a negotiation that isn\u2019t even ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the ceasefire, ongoing Hezbollah drone attacks have continued to kill IDF troops<\/a> and forced residents of the north back into shelters<\/a> even as life across the rest of the country has largely returned to normal.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tIsraeli security and rescue forces at the scene of damage caused by a missile attack from Lebanon in the northern city of Kiryat Shmona, April 1, 2026. (Ayal Margolin\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

Council chiefs in the north have also recently fiercely criticized the government over what they call an inadequate effort<\/a> to protect the citizens<\/a>, and have protested a recent decision<\/a> (since somewhat ameliorated<\/a>) to cut programs intended to strengthen frontline communities.<\/p>\n

\u2018A strong brand\u2019<\/p>\n

Despite the growing disillusionment, a potential loss of support for Netanyahu in the north might not benefit his rivals in their effort to oust the Likud-led right-wing government from power.<\/p>\n

Instead, voters could shift further to the right, backing hardline factions like Otzma Yehudit, led by Itamar Ben Gvir, said Scheindlin, despite the fact that Ben Gvir is also part of the government.<\/p>\n

But she reiterated that it was too early to accurately predict how the handling of the conflict would play out on election day.<\/p>\n

Electoral polls broken down by region have yet to be published, but surveys predict a near-stalemate between Likud and its presumptive partners and a bloc of opposition-aligned Zionist parties led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett\u2019s Together venture with Opposition Leader Yair Lapid and Gadi Eisenkot\u2019s new Yashar party.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tOpposition Leader Yair Lapid (right) and former prime minister Naftali Bennett at a press conference announcing their joint run in the coming elections, in Herzliya, central Israel, April 26, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

According to a Channel 12 poll<\/a> released late last month, if elections were held today, Netanyahu\u2019s right-wing bloc would only garner 50 out of 120 Knesset seats while the Zionist opposition parties would receive 60. Arab factions, which are seen as unlikely to partner with either group, would get 10 seats.<\/p>\n

Shaul Cohen, a Likud activist from Kiryat Shmona, told The Times of Israel that while he and his neighbors have suffered a lot, he does not see the prospect of a mass exodus from Netanyahu\u2019s party.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a week or two ago, I had a Katyusha rocket land behind my house. The solar water heaters were smashed, and the roof tiles were broken. All the neighbors here were hit, cars too. In a place like this, there\u2019s no nearby hospital, no trains. It\u2019s hard,\u201d Cohen complained.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tLocal authority heads in northern Israel hold a press conference in Moshav Shtula near the Israeli border with Lebanon, April 27, 2026. (Ayal Margolin\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

But at the end of the day, \u201cLikud is strong, it\u2019s a strong brand. It\u2019s a family and people are crazy about Bibi! They love Bibi,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Even if some votes go to Ben Gvir, he predicted, they will be offset by disillusioned \u201cleftists\u201d from the Gaza border region who will shift to the right.<\/p>\n

Even if Netanyahu doesn\u2019t lose major support, there seems little chance that the war will produce a popularity bump for the prime minister, which many beleive he had been angling for.<\/p>\n

Speaking with The Times of Israel shortly after Israel and the US launched the war with Iran on February 28, a coalition insider said that Netanyahu was hoping that a \u201cnarrative of a win over Iran would boost the PM\u2019s reelection chances and shift the narrative away from October 7<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tA farmer drives a tractor past the concrete wall in Moshav Shtula, along the Israeli border with Lebanon in northern Israel, during a ceasefire, April 27, 2026. (Ayal Margolin\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

According to Nir, this does not appear to have worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeventy percent of the Israeli public do not believe they get an accurate and reliable description of reality from their leadership,\u201d he said. \u201cThey told us Hezbollah would take years to rehabilitate itself and Iran [received] a strike that would also take years to rebuild from. No one really believes these statements anymore. Hence, a lot of pessimism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the strikes on Iran don\u2019t resume and the full-on war with Lebanon does not proceed [and] the Israeli public feels that we didn\u2019t really finish the job\u2026 I think it\u2019s a gamechanger,\u201d Nir added. \u201cAnd there\u2019s not enough time [until] the election\u2026 to make it spinnable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diana Bletter and Stav Levaton contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending his decision to accept a US-brokered ceasefire with Hezbollah in mid-April, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[27975,29674,27587,41,37,2742,10879],"class_list":{"0":"post-101791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-2026-israel-hezbollah-conflict","9":"tag-2026-israeli-elections","10":"tag-2026-us-israel-war-with-iran","11":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-israeli-politics","14":"tag-polls"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116531901633702095","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}