Nearly 60% of Israelis support return to fighting Hamas in Gaza

By JNS Staff

(JNS) — Nearly three in five Israelis back the resumption of fighting in the Gaza Strip in the wake of Hamas’s rejection of a U.S. proposal to extend the ceasefire in exchange for the release of more hostages.

According to a survey carried out by Israel’s Direct Polls Institute and published by Channel 14 on Monday night—before the Israel Defense Forces launched a campaign of extensive airstrikes in Gaza—59 percent of Israelis support the resumption of hostilities.

Some 38 percent said they opposed it, while 3 percent of respondents did not express a position.

Direct Polls, which accurately predicted the results of the Jewish state’s most recent general election in 2022, surveyed a representative sample of 506 Israeli adults on March 17. (The margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points at a confidence level of 95 percent, Direct Polls said.)

The IDF announced early on Tuesday morning that it had launched “extensive” strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said the military was acting after Hamas rebuffed several proposals from U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and others.

“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

The goal of the campaign remains to achieve “the objectives of the war as they have been determined by the political echelon, including the release of all of our hostages, the living and the deceased,” the PMO statement added.

Even before Netanyahu ordered the airstrikes, his Likud Party was strengthening in the polls, according to Monday’s Direct Polls survey.

If a vote were to be called now, the Likud Party would secure 34 Knesset mandates out of the parliament’s 120, up two since the previous Direct Polls survey published on March 6 and one more than it won in the general election on Nov. 1, 2022.

Netanyahu’s coalition of right-wing and religious parties would win 64 mandates, up one since the March 6 survey, and the same amount of Knesset mandates it received in the 2022 election, per Direct Polls.

After the Likud Party, Yair Golan’s far-left HaDemokratim received the next most seats (18), followed by the Yisrael Beytenu Party (14), Shas (11), United Torah Judaism and National Unity Party (eight each), Yesh Atid and Otzma Yehudit (six each), and Religious Zionism, Ra’am (the United Arab List) and Hadash-Ta’al (five each).

In a head-to-head matchup for who is best suited for the role of prime minister, Netanyahu defeated National Unity Party’s Benny Gantz by a margin of 47 percent to 17 percent (36 percent of respondents said neither was suited).

When choosing between Netanyahu and Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid, 47 percent replied that the longtime Likud prime minister was best suited to lead the Jewish state, 20 percent preferred Lapid, and 33 percent said neither.

The next national vote is scheduled for 2026.