Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a political backlash in Israel for the limited nature of Sunday’s airstrikes against Hezbollah, amid calls for a broader offensive in Lebanon.
Some of the fiercest criticism came from the far-right wing of the prime minister’s own fractious coalition, which is also increasingly divided over the status of Jerusalem’s holiest site.
Israel’s airstrikes and Hezbollah’s rocket and drone launches that followed soon after was the biggest cross-border engagement since the two sides fought a war in 2006 in terms of the number of aircraft sorties and munitions launched, though not in terms of casualties. Three Hezbollah and allied fighters were killed and one Israeli sailor, killed by fragments of an Israeli interceptor.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, claimed the pre-emptive strikes on Sunday morning prevented Hezbollah from launching up to two-thirds of the rockets it had intended to fire at Israel. Israel also claimed to have shot down almost all the incoming Hezbollah drones.
Netanyahu issued a warning that the airstrikes would not be “the end of the story”, but reports in the Israeli press cited military sources as saying there was no planned follow-up.
The prime minister was widely blamed on Monday, from both the centre and right of the political spectrum, for the limited goal of Sunday’s air raids, which disrupted Hezbollah’s planned aerial assault, but had done nothing, the 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, forced from their homes by bombing by Hezbollah in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, have said they would boycott meetings with government representatives, accusing the coalition of prioritising the defence of central Israel but not the north.
Ben Caspit, a columnist in the centre-right Maariv newspaper, wrote: “For nearly a year, the Galilee has been pulverised, ravaged and set on fire; tens of thousands of Israelis have been torn from their homes; and the entire country, which not long ago was considered to be a regional superpower, has been humiliated.” He said Netanyahu had chosen the most cautious of the military options presented to him by his generals.
“He prevented and disrupted one of Hezbollah’s operational plans, but he didn’t change our strategic situation in the northern theatre,” Caspit added, arguing that a broader aerial campaign would begin “to create the conditions to allow the residents of the Upper Galilee to return to their homes and to allow Israel to restore its sovereignty over swaths of its own territory”.
Benny Gantz, a retired general, former minister in Netanyahu’s coalition and one of his main rivals, described the airstrikes as “too little, too late”.
In a video statement during a visit to northern communities, he said: “We must keep up the advantage of the initiative that was taken and increase the political and military pressure to push Hezbollah away, to return northern residents to their homes safely.”
Netanyahu’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, joined in the criticism.
“Israel must not be content with a single, pre-emptive sortie. We must bring a decisive war against Hezbollah that will remove the threat in the north and allow the residents to return home safely,” Ben-Gvir said.
He singled out Gallant for recrimination. The national security and defence ministers are locked in a bitter public row over government policy, particularly over the status of the holy compound around the al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which Jews call the Temple Mount.
Ben-Gvir pressed ahead with his campaign to upend Israel’s policy on the site since it captured East Jerusalem in 1967, that only Muslims would be allowed to pray on the compound, while Jews would pray at the Western Wall.
Ben-Gvir violated that policy when he led Jewish prayers there last month and told army radio on Monday that Jews had equal status with Muslims.
“The policies on the Temple Mount allow prayer, period,” he said. “There is a directive that there should be equal law between Jews and Muslims.”
He added that if it were up to him, there would be an Israeli flag and a synagogue on Temple Mount.
The prime minister’s office issued a statement saying there had been no change in the status quo on the site, and other members of the coalition criticised Ben-Gvir for inflammatory rhetoric, which they warned was liable to trigger a revolt among Palestinians and outrage in the wider Arab world.
“Undermining the status quo on the Temple Mount is an unnecessary and irresponsible act,” Gallant said. “Ben-Gvir’s actions endanger Israel.”
The interior minister, Moshe Arbel, from the ultra-orthodox Shas party, called for Ben-Gvir to be stripped of his authority over the police, warning: “His lack of wisdom could cost lives.”
