According to multiple recent polls, support for Benjamin Netanyahu and his government has declined significantly since the most recent election. Haviv Rettig Gur observes, based on more specific survey data, that the prime minister’s problem isn’t that his voters aren’t happy with his government’s stalled attempt at judicial reform, but that his voters care about other issues more:

“What do you think should be the priority of the government?” a Channel 12 poll asked last week. It asked respondents to choose between just two options: the looming “economic crisis”—rising food and gas prices, inflation, etc.—and the “judicial reform.” Nearly three-quarters, 74 percent, said the economy and just 19 percent the judicial reform—a whopping 55-point gap. And when Likud voters were [isolated] from the larger sample, the gap was almost as huge: 69 percent economy, 27 percent judicial reform—a 42-point gap. . . . This doesn’t mean judicial reform isn’t important to right-wing voters, only that it’s deemed less urgent than other issues.

It matters, then, that the government has very publicly neglected nearly every other issue in the four months since the coalition was formed. Entire ministries and vital agencies—welfare, labor, the National Insurance Institute—are still without chief executives. Dozens of important decisions are waiting in the Justice Ministry for minister Yariv Levin’s signature, unable to move forward because his attention is elsewhere.

With less than a month to the deadline for passing a state budget, the budget bill has barely been dealt with in the Knesset. It’s now advancing with major and long-promised reforms—including a streamlining of import regulations that Netanyahu promised in the election campaign would dramatically lower the cost of living—having been removed. The government and the Knesset simply don’t have the time or political bandwidth to deal with them before the budget deadline.

[For a government to collapse], it only takes one coalition party concluding that the government is irredeemably floundering, that it won’t be able to turn things around, and that it’s therefore in its political interest to jump ship and position itself as a critic of the flailing coalition. Everything then unravels very quickly.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.