Israel’s Netanyahu faces reckoning over Hamas disaster
- Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned of a ‘long and difficult’ war to destroy Hamas
- Much will depend on the result of the operation, fate of more than 200 hostages seized on October 7
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu built his reputation as a security hawk on the back of his service in an elite special forces unit that carried out some of Israel’s most daring hostage rescues.
His legacy as his country’s longest serving leader will now be shaped by one of the worst security failures it has known and by the fate of more than 200 hostages seized by Palestinian Hamas gunmen from Gaza who Israel says killed 1,400 people on the deadliest day of its 75-year-old history.
The scale of the killing, accounts of trauma and images of the violence that emerged from the southern Israeli communities around Gaza have shaken the country.
In his sixth term as prime minister, Netanyahu, 74, heads one of Israel’s most extreme right-wing coalitions and has come under increasing pressure as the initial shock has given way to fury at the failures that allowed the attack to take place.
He has refused to accept responsibility, saying only that everyone will have to answer difficult questions when the war with Hamas is over, and in one of his rare press conferences, dismissed a question asking if he would resign.