Three years after the attack, residents near Gaza are torn between demanding Netanyahu\u2019s departure and backing an even harder right<\/p>\n
For residents of Israel\u2019s Gaza Envelope, the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, was not an abstract national trauma. Communities close to the Gaza border were among the first to come under assault, and residents spent hours locked in safe rooms, hiding from gunmen and rocket fire. Three years later, that shared experience has produced sharply different political conclusions among people living in the same region.
\nMichal Koren Kariv, a 50-year-old filmmaker from Kibbutz Mefalsim, remembers that morning all too well. As Hamas launched its deadly assault on communities across southern Israel, her family remained inside their home as armed militants reached the area. They spent hours in a protected room without electricity, unsure of what was happening outside.
\nWhen the family was finally able to leave, Koren Kariv says she saw devastation on a scale she had never witnessed before. The experience, she says, fundamentally changed her relationship with the state.
\n\u201cI no longer believe anything,\u201d she said. \u201cSimply nothing.\u201d
\nAccountability is a must
\nFor her, the coming election is largely about the demand for a state commission of inquiry into October 7, an investigation that would establish what went wrong, who knew what and when, and which decisions or institutional failures contributed to the disaster. She says she plans to vote for those who promise to get to the bottom of those failures.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that whoever was prime minister when the attack occurred must bear political responsibility. Netanyahu was the head back then, so he should have resigned. I am not saying I won\u2019t be voting for a right-wing party. All I am saying is that Netanyahu should not be prime minister.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koren Kariv says she has never voted for Netanyahu\u2019s Likud, but she has never been in the so-called \u201canti-Bibi camp,\u201d simply because she acknowledges the positive things Netanyahu has done for the country. She also recognizes that the current government has invested heavily in rebuilding the southern communities.
\nShortly after the attacks, the Israeli government established the Tkuma administration to oversee reconstruction and recovery in communities damaged or evacuated after the massacre. Government figures show a multibillion-shekel reconstruction program covering housing, infrastructure, education, community services, and economic recovery.
\nKoren Kariv acknowledges that the Gaza Envelope has received substantial investment since the attack, including new construction, educational funding and a stronger military presence. But she draws a distinction between rebuilding communities physically and addressing the political and institutional failures she believes preceded the attack.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s next move could leave the Middle East looking for the bomb<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question here is not simply whether houses have been rebuilt or money has been allocated. I want to know why the country was so unprepared, whether warnings were missed and who should have acted differently. So my conclusion is therefore not that the state has done nothing. Rather, that reconstruction cannot substitute for an investigation into the failures that preceded the attack.\u201d
\nTilting towards the right
\nA few kilometers away, Sami Danieli, a 65-year-old former security officer from the religious moshav of Shibolim near Sderot, drew a very different lesson from October 7.
\nUnlike many other communities in the Gaza Envelope that experienced direct infiltration by militants, his moshav was relatively protected. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad reached its outskirts but did not enter. Residents nevertheless sheltered as rockets fell, and Danieli says he lost close friends in neighboring communities that bore the brunt of the attack.
\nEven before October 7, Danieli had voted for National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who supports the expulsion of Palestinians and promotes settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza. The events of October 7 did not weaken that support. They reinforced it.
\n\u201cIf I could vote for Ben Gvir twice, I would do so,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe there can be peace with Hamas, and that\u2019s why Israel needs to take a tougher approach in its security policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben-Gvir has said he would pursue a tougher security policy if he were given the defense portfolio following the election. As national security minister, he has already pursued a series of hardline measures towards Palestinians. These include worsening conditions for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, backing legislation imposing the death penalty for people convicted of terrorism, and distributing thousands of firearms to Israelis living in areas considered vulnerable to Palestinian attacks.
\nDanieli says he supports those measures. He remains firmly behind the right-wing bloc headed by Netanyahu and rejects claims that the current government bears responsibility for Israel\u2019s failure to prevent or decisively end the war.
\nInstead, he points to anti-government protests and other factors that he believes constrained Israel\u2019s ability to defeat Hamas.
\n\u201cThe anti-government protesters were the ones who weakened the country with their demonstrations. Then, when the war happened, total victory was not achieved partially due to the restrictions imposed by the Americans [under the Biden administration \u2013 ed.] and partially because of ammunition shortages. <\/p>\n
\u201cNetanyahu\u2019s performance during the war was excellent though. Not very good \u2013 it was excellent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Danieli also gives the government credit for the reconstruction effort in the south.
\n\u201cGovernment assistance reached the region and funds were provided, but of course there will always be people who will say that this is not enough,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cI believe that much of the criticism is coming from residents who are politically motivated. Eighty percent of them have a political agenda and this anti-Bibi bias prevents them from seeing the truth. This is why I don\u2019t want the left to come to power. The right-wing must stay and rule,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
The West\u2019s pretend outrage won\u2019t save Palestinians<\/p>\n
Uncertainty prevails
\nPolling, however, shows that the hopes of Danieli might not materialize.
\nReuters\u2019 polling tracker, updated in late September, showed the centrist Yashar party led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot narrowly ahead of Likud in the polling average. The aggregate projected 66 seats for parties opposed to Netanyahu and 48 for parties supporting him, while also noting that the anti-Netanyahu camp did not have an obvious coalition path to the 61-seat threshold.
\nIndividual polls by Israeli television channels and news outlets have produced different results. A Kan survey reported in late September put Yashar at 23 seats and Likud at 21, with the two main blocs each projected at 52 mandates.
\nA Times of Israel poll published on October 1 likewise found Netanyahu\u2019s bloc ahead but still short of the 61 seats required to form a government on its own. Likud and Yashar were tied for first place among individual parties.
\nIsrael uses nationwide proportional representation. Parties must pass a 3.25% electoral threshold to enter the Knesset, and a governing coalition requires the support of at least 61 of the parliament\u2019s 120 members.
\nFor the residents of the Gaza Envelope, however, the numbers on a polling chart tell only part of the story.
\nThey lived through the same morning, heard the same rockets and waited behind the same locked doors for help to arrive. Yet, three years later, their memories of October 7 have taken them in opposite political directions.
\nKoren Kariv sees the election as a test of accountability, a chance to establish why the state failed and who should answer for it. Danieli sees it as a test of resolve, an argument for maintaining the political course he believes offers the strongest security.
\nThree years on, the communities closest to Gaza are no longer simply asking how they survived October 7. They are asking what the country should become because of it. And when they enter the voting booth, those two questions will lead them to very different answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three years after the attack, residents near Gaza are torn between demanding Netanyahu\u2019s departure and backing an even harder right For residents of Israel\u2019s Gaza Envelope, the Hamas-led attack of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t