Friday, August 29, 2014

ISRAEL'S PM BENJAMIN NATANYAHU POPULARITY PLUMMETING AT HOME

Israeli opinion polls showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu popularity plummeting, such as a survey on Channel 10 television in which viewers gave him a grade of 55 percent, down from a 69 percent score at the beginning of the month. 
"After 50 days of warfare in which a terror organization killed dozens of soldiers and civilians, destroyed the daily routine (and) placed the country in a state of economic distress ... we could have expected much more than an announcement of a ceasefire," analyst Shimon Shiffer wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's biggest-selling newspaper.
"We could have expected the prime minister to go to the president’s residence and inform him of his decision to resign his post."
Answering critics, Netanyahu told a news conference: "I don't set unrealistic goals. We're not dealing here with populism."
An open-ended ceasefire in the Gaza war held on Wednesday as Netanyahu faced strong criticism in Israel over a costly conflict with Palestinian militants in which no clear victor has emerged.
On the streets of the battered, Hamas-run Palestinian enclave, people headed to shops and banks, trying to resume the normal pace of life after seven weeks of fighting. Thousands of others, who had fled the battles and sheltered with relatives or in schools, returned home, where some found only rubble.
In Israel, sirens warning of incoming rocket fire from the Gaza Strip fell silent. 
Netanyahu told a news conference Israel had dealt Hamas its toughest blow ever and had rebuffed its demands for a truce. 
He said it was "too early to say" whether the calm would be prolonged, then threatened the Islamist group:
"If it resumes fire, we will not tolerate a sprinkle of shooting at any part of Israel, what we did in response now, we will respond even more vigorously."
But Israeli media commentators, echoing attacks by members of Netanyahu's governing coalition, voiced deep disappointment over his leadership during the most prolonged bout of Israeli-Palestinian violence in a decade.
In Gaza, several thousand Palestinians cheered and waved green Hamas banners as the movement’s deputy leader, Ismail Haniyeh, making his first public appearance 
since the war, proclaimed victory over Israel 
in the latest fighting.

Source: Reuters




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