Over a year into the war with Hamas, Israelis express more negative than positive views of key political leaders in both Israel’s governing coalition and its political opposition. They are even more critical of Palestinian leaders.
Israeli leaders
Israelis express more negative than positive views of their country’s political leaders.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is viewed very or somewhat favorably by 45% of Israelis. Around half (53%) see him unfavorably, including 38% who say their opinion is very unfavorable. These assessments are largely unchanged from last year, which marked a high point in unfavorable views of Netanyahu since we first started asking the question in 2013.
Benny Gantz – the leader of the National Unity opposition party who joined Netanyahu’s government at the start of the Israel-Hamas war, then resigned in June 2024 – is seen favorably by 43% of Israelis. Around half (54%) have an unfavorable view of him. Negative views of Gantz are up 10 points since last year. (The 2024 survey was fielded when Gantz was still part of the emergency government and a member of Israel’s war cabinet.)
Yair Lapid, leader of the opposition in the Israeli Knesset and head of the centrist party Yesh Atid, is the least popular of the three leaders we asked about: 35% of Israelis have a favorable view of him and 61% have an unfavorable view, including 37% whose opinion is very unfavorable. Lapid performed similarly with the Israeli public in our 2024 survey.
Related: Most people across 24 surveyed countries have negative views of Israel and Netanyahu
Views by ethnicity
Favorable views of Netanyahu are more common among Jewish Israelis than Arab Israelis by a large margin (55% vs. 8%).
Israeli Jews are also more favorable than Israeli Arabs toward Gantz (44% vs. 35%), but the opposite is true for Lapid (31% vs. 49%).
Views by Jewish religiousness
Netanyahu is far more popular with Haredi and Dati Jews than with Masorti or Hiloni Jews. The share of Haredim and Datiim who favor him is more than triple the share of Hilonim who feel the same (86% vs. 23%). A smaller majority of Masortim have favorable views of Netanyahu (67%).
Seven-in-ten Hilonim have a favorable view of Gantz, compared with 36% of Masortim and 17% of Haredim and Datiim. Lapid is even less popular with the most religiously observant Jews – only 6% of Haredi and Dati Jews feel positively toward him. Roughly a quarter of Masortim (24%) have a favorable view of the Knesset opposition leader, as do 54% of Hilonim.
Views by ideology
Netanyahu remains popular with his political base, favored by a 73% majority of those on the ideological right. This compares with 21% of those in the center and just 5% of Israelis on the left.
Centrist politician Gantz is significantly less popular with the Israeli right (34%) than he is with the center (60%) or the left (52%). Lapid, also a centrist, is favored by 56% of those in the center and 66% of those on the left. A much smaller share of Israelis on the right (15%) see him in a positive light.
Palestinian leaders
Israelis tend to be more negative than positive in their assessments of Palestinian political leaders, too, but by wider margins.
Large majorities of Israelis have unfavorable views of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen (85%), and of his fellow Fatah member Marwan Barghouti (80%), who has been imprisoned in Israel since 2002. The share who view Abbas negatively is down 4 points since 2024, while views of Barghouti have not changed significantly in that time.
At least nine-in-ten Israeli Jews have unfavorable views of both men, and nearly seven-in-ten Israeli Arabs say this about Abbas. But only about a quarter of Israeli Arabs express an unfavorable opinion of Barghouti (23%), while 62% see him in a favorable light.
