Just 15 percent of Israelis would keep Netanyahu as prime minister after war: Survey

Only 15 percent of Israelis want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stay in his position after the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, according to a . The Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute survey 23 percent of Israelis want Benny Gantz, a current emergency unity government, to be prime minister instead of Netanyahu.

On Sunday, Netanyahu a genocide in Gaza, in the wake of South Africa’s filing of a case against his country at the United Nations’s top court. “I would like to say a word about South Africa’s false accusation that Israel is committing genocide. No, South Africa, it is not we who have come to perpetrate genocide, it is Hamas,” Netanyahu said during a Cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv, according to an English translation reported by Agence France Presse.

“Hamas would kill us all if it only could,” Netanyahu added. More than 21,500 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israel’s retaliatory actions for an attack by Hamas in early October that killed 1,200 Israelis. The poll also found only 10.8 percent of Israelis being “[v]ery optimistic” about the “state of democratic governance” in Israel.

Only 7 percent of respondents said Israel is meeting the goal of “[t]oppling Hamas” to a “[v]ery large extent.” About 36 percent said it is meeting the aforementioned goal to a “[m]oderate extent.” The survey was conducted Dec. 25 28, featuring responses from 756 people. The maximum sampling error for the survey was plus or minus 3.55 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level..