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.

Yet the prime minister also hedged, promising that the campaign against the terror group was far from over.

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.

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 — the terror group had begun firing at Israel in response to the US-Israeli joint strikes on Iran — Israel  agreed to silence the guns on its northern border.

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.

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.

For many in the north who remain under fire, the fighting exposed as hollow the claims that Hezbollah’s 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’s best interests.

Rising anger among northerners over how the war is being handled has the potential to weaken Netanyahu and his Likud party’s standing in a region normally considered a bastion of support.

Looming on the horizon are Knesset elections, which many already see as a referendum on the government’s response to October 7 and the subsequent wars in Lebanon and Iran.

Widespread disappointment

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’s bloc were supported by 74.77%, 69.27%, and 57.23% of voters in these cities, respectively, during the last election.

According to a mid-April poll 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........

© The Times of Israel