The far-right coalition falls in the polls. A minister from Netanyahu's Likud party admits: We will be held accountable
TEL AVIV - Time 06:29. Not a day before, not a minute later. While a minister - the only one at the moment - admits that "this government will bear responsibility, we were in power".
As Herzi Halevi, the chief of the cabinet, apologizes to the entire nation ("on Saturday morning we failed in our duty to protect the state and its citizens"), the prime minister's office issues a statement to clarify that Benjamin Netanyahu was informed the morning of Shrove Tuesday, shortly after the invasion had begun.
But he was never informed of the confrontation between intelligence chiefs on Friday night, triggered - local papers reveal - by the suspicious movements of Hamas paramilitaries inside Gaza, over the decision taken by the secret services to reinforce the south with an intervention unit quickly against terrorism, to talk about it again the next morning. Too late.
Israelis are not waiting for an act of coercion from the longest-serving prime minister in the country's history, they are waiting for the end of this war - however long it may be - to end Hamas, to turn back and… vote.
Netanyahu's Likud party and his entire far-right coalition - according to polls published by the "Maariv" newspaper - explode, the prime minister's party finds itself with almost half the seats.
The group led by Benny Gantz is making the jump - 41 compared to the current 12 - which went to the polls last December with a name already fitting for these dark hours: National Unity.
Above all, the majority of those interviewed trust the management of the war - and the future of the state - to the former Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff: 48 percent against 29 accumulated by "Bibi", as Netanyahu is otherwise called.
Indeed - on the specific question about the development of the conflict - Defense Minister Yoav Gallant defeats 54 to 42 the man who had fired him (but never fired him) because he had dared to call for a halt to the justice reform plan of considered an anti-democratic turning point.
In this first week, the undisputed leader of Likud, a total of 16 years in the prime minister's chair, is paying not only for the disaster around the Belt, the 1300 people massacred and the 150 hostages kidnapped by terrorists.
Commentators in the mainstream newspapers accuse him of taking five days to accept Gantz's proposal from the opposition to form an emergency government and a limited war cabinet in which the two sit alongside Gallant.
Negotiating and maneuvering as if a week ago several thousand Palestinian paramilitaries had not invaded the south of the country.
"This agreement - writes Yossi Verter in the newspaper 'Haaretz' - is for him the least evil. It saves him an internal dispute with the two parties of the radical right, reserves the power to make diplomatic-military decisions in the extended sessions of the government".
Gantz has already clarified that the agreement is only valid for the duration of the conflict.
And here's what Werter advises: "One minute after the ceasefire, the opposition Gantz must leave and start working to send Netanyahu home"./ Corriere della Sera