TEHRAN – Prolonged wars test the aggressor’s political system to produce effective leadership, while also maintaining social cohesion.
The genocidal war on Gaza did not reveal a shortage of leaders in the Israeli regime so much as it highlighted a political system’s growing difficulty in producing leadership that commanded broad public trust and could preserve unity of decision-making.
This became evident from the earliest days of the genocide, when an emergency government was formed with the inclusion of Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, reflecting a recognition within the political elite that managing the most dangerous war the regime had faced in decades required a leadership framework broader than the governing coalition alone.
Yet that unity proved to be a temporary response to an extraordinary shock rather than the foundation of lasting political consensus. As the genocidal war continued, disagreements resurfaced over its objectives, matters related to handling the captives, arrangements for “the day after” and the boundaries between the political and military leadership.
The process ultimately ended with Gantz and Eisenkot leaving the emergency government, and political polarization returned to the forefront.
This shift was not limited to the political elite. It was also reflected in public confidence in the regime’s leadership. According to an Israeli poll conducted in March 2025, 87 percent of settlers believed Netanyahu should bear responsibility for the October 7 failure, while 72.5 percent supported his resignation either immediately or after the war ended.
By July 2025, confidence in Netanyahu stood at only 40 percent among the general public, compared with 68.5 percent for Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. By June 2026, 61 percent of Israelis believed Netanyahu should not run in the next elections.
Over time, the leadership crisis expanded beyond the dispute between the government and the opposition to encompass relations between the government and the security and judicial institutions.
The controversy extended beyond the dismissal of the Shin Bet chief, which reached the Supreme Court, to the appointment of a new Mossad director. That appointment was surrounded by legal objections and court challenges before ultimately being approved by the Supreme Court, illustrating how the dispute had shifted from managing the war itself to managing the institutions of the regime.
The unity imposed by the shock of October 7, therefore, never evolved into a sustainable political consensus. As the genocide dragged on, partisan and institutional divisions returned to the forefront, extending from conflict between the government and the opposition to tensions between the government and the security and judicial establishments, making the leadership crisis one of the war’s most significant domestic consequences.
Equally important, the genocidal war erupted at a moment when the regime was experiencing one of the deepest periods of internal division in its short history, driven by the judicial reform crisis and the unprecedented political and social protests and confrontations that accompanied it.
During the first days of the genocide, many believed the security threat would push Israelis to overcome their internal crisis, or at least postpone it until the fighting in Gaza ended.
The prolonged genocidal war, however, exposed the limits of that assumption. Rather than becoming an opportunity to resolve the structural crisis that had preceded it, the war of attrition interacted with the existing political reality and weak leadership, bringing old disputes back to the surface while adding new fault lines directly related to the conduct of the genocidal war itself.
Instead of remaining an external factor that temporarily imposed unity, the genocidal war became one of the forces reshaping the regime’s political and social landscape.
This assessment is no longer confined to political observation; it has also become part of the regime’s own research. Studies show one of the aggression’s most significant consequences is identified as the deepening of polarization within Israeli politics and society, dividing itself as one of the genocide’s domestic outcomes rather than a crisis that predated it.
Opinion polls likewise confirm that this transformation extends beyond research assessments and is reflected in the Zionist regime’s public opinion. A survey conducted in June 2026 showed confidence in the government stood at 57 percent among coalition supporters, compared with only 5 percent among opposition supporters. The gap reflects not only differing evaluations of the government but also the extent to which the war itself has become a subject of political polarization. The same survey found that 66 percent of settlers believed social solidarity was weak or limited, rising to 80 percent among opposition supporters.
The divisions no longer revolved solely around issues that predated October 7, such as judicial reform and the relationship between religion and government policies.
They expanded to include questions imposed by the genocidal war itself, foremost among them the priority of recovering the captives versus continuing the aggression, the future of the Gaza Strip, legislation on ultra-Orthodox military conscription, the distribution of the burdens of war, and the boundaries between the political leadership and the military establishment.
The genocidal war neither ended the Zionist regime’s internal divisions nor left them unchanged. It delayed their eruption during the initial shock. Still, as it continued, it deepened and reshaped them, leaving the regime, after more than 1,000 days of aggression, facing a society that is more divided and polarized, with a broader and more complex map of disputes than existed before October 7.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: tehrantimes.com
