Tens of thousands of Israelis have protested against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, calling for him to resign.
They are angry at what they see as Netanyahu’s attempts to stay in power at any cost, after he decided to resume the bombing of Gaza last Tuesday, even as Israeli captives remain in the Palestinian enclave.
The ceasefire that Netanyahu broke would have eventually seen the release of all the captives, but he was unwilling to move forward to end the war on Gaza, as the deal had stipulated.
Renewed Israeli air strikes on Gaza have already killed more than 500 Palestinians, including 200 children, over the course of five days. However, analysts say that concern for the Palestinians killed in the enclave has been absent from the protesters’ grievances.
“People don’t believe there’s any purpose to continuing war. Not because of what it will mean for Palestinians – they’re ‘invisible’ – but in what it’ll mean for them and the hostages,” political analyst Ori Goldberg told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv.
Budget vote
The protesters – and many analysts – say Netanyahu is only motivated by political gain.
He’s already had a political win: far-right former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir rejoined the government the day Israel resumed its attacks on Gaza.
Netanyahu needs the support of Ben-Gvir – who resigned in January, angry over the ceasefire – in parliament to ensure the passage of his government’s budget. If the budget does not pass by March 31, snap elections will be triggered.
Throughout its life cycle, there have been several competing interests vying for slices of the budget pie, some of which have threatened to upend the entire process.
Ben-Gvir and his Jewish Power party had previously voted against budget-related bills in December, apparently angered that the budget did not include a pay rise for the police, which reported to him.
A longstanding issue has also come from the ultra-Orthodox parties, who have pushed for guarantees that Jewish seminary students would be exempt from military service and that the government would continue to earmark sizeable funds for religious seminaries.
The budget envisions $169.19bn in total spending, including significant amounts on “resources to defeat the enemy while supporting reservists, business owners, reconstruction efforts in the north and south”, according to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
In the 2024 fiscal year, Israel’s spending on the wars it was waging spiked, pushing the budget deficit to 6.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and prompting all three of the globe’s top credit-rating agencies to cut Israel’s credit rating. The 2025 budget sets the budget deficit target at no more than 4.9 percent of GDP.
Anger
Netanyahu may be satisfied with gaining enough support to likely pass his budget, but it has come at the expense of increasing the outrage of the opposition towards him.
Demonstrators have railed against Ben-Gvir’s return – which, coming right after the first strikes on Gaza, suggested to many that breaking the ceasefire and killing hundreds of people was part of an effort to ensure that Netanyahu had enough political backing in parliament.
“Netanyahu probably already had the votes he needed … However, Ben-Gvir’s support following the strikes ensures the budget will go through,” said Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flashenberg.
“There’s a lot of anger … people fighting… against the government and what it’s saying,” said Goldberg. People … are angry at Netanyahu and rejecting the suggestion he’s played upon for years: That his welfare and that of the country are one. They’re not.”
“It’s like the emperor’s new clothes. Everyone can see it now: the emperor’s naked.”
‘Deep state’
Netanyahu claims to be under assault from a “deep state” in a country he has ruled for more than 17 years in total. The prime minister says that this deep state has “weaponised” the justice department against him – an apparently deliberate aping of United States President Donald Trump’s rhetoric.
“In America and in Israel, when a strong right wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will. They won’t win in either place! We stand strong together,” Netanyahu wrote on social media.
As part of this supposed fight against the deep state, Netanyahu is currently locked in a battle to dismiss the head of the Shin Bet domestic security service, Ronen Bar, who is running an investigation into the prime minister’s office. He is also attempting to rid himself of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who initially blocked his attempts to suspend Bar. Those moves have added to the rage of the protest movement.
Netanyahu’s coalition has backed him, voting to dismiss Bar on Thursday, and passing a no-confidence vote in Baharav-Miara on Sunday.
But the Supreme Court froze the government’s attempt to get rid of the Shin Bet head on Friday, and Baharav-Miara said on Sunday that the no-confidence vote in her was not part of the process necessary to remove her from the position of attorney general.
Netanyahu claimed on Saturday that the push to fire Bar was not because he was investigating the PM’s office, but rather because of the Shin Bet’s failures during the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel in which 1,139 people were killed and more than 200 taken captive.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu’s coalition voted against a bill to set up an inquiry into the failings of the political class that led to the October 7 attack.
