Inside Israeli defence headquarters, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu monitored the first release of Hamas-held hostages while outside, their families in a Tel Aviv square gathered around Benny Gantz, his leading challenger for the top job.
On camera Gantz, a former army chief and opposition leader who joined Netanyahu's war cabinet last month, pointedly asked a TV crew to leave him alone with the families. Photos published later showed him hugging individuals in the crowd.
Facing a huge wave of criticism over his failure to prevent the shock Hamas infiltration of Israel on Oct 7, Netanyahu has largely avoided the limelight while conducting a two-front war, one against Hamas and the other for his political survival.
Netanyahu, 74, has long maintained an image as a security hawk, only to experience on his watch the deadliest single incident in Israel's 75-year-old history.
Israelis have shunned some of Netanyahu's ministers, blaming them for failing to prevent the Hamas gunmen from entering from Gaza, killing 1,200 people, abducting 240 more and engulfing the country in war.
In separate incidents, at least three of his ministers were subjected to derision and abuse when they appeared in public, underscoring the scale of public fury over the failures that paved the way for Hamas to carry out the attack.
Over the weekend, his office issued videos showing him in the Defence Ministry situation room. On Sunday, Netanyahu visited Gaza. His office issued photos afterwards showing him in a helmet and flak jacket meeting soldiers and commanders.
Known by his nickname "Bibi", Netanyahu stands to gain from a war that further delays his 3½- year-old corruption trial and puts off an expected state inquiry into why Israel under his leadership was caught off guard.
Huddling with generals, he may also hope to salvage his reputation through his conduct of the war and the return of hostages while refusing to accept responsibility and dismissing a question at a rare press conference asking if he would resign.
But, his biographer Anshel Pfeffer said: "No matter how long Netanyahu manages to hold on to power, he won't salvage his reputation.
"He is now tainted irretrievably by the failure to prevent the Oct 7 massacre, by his own strategy of allowing Hamas to remain in control, with its military arsenal, in Gaza and by the utterly inept civil relief efforts of his government since the Oct 7 attack."
The author of the 2018 book Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, Pfeffer said recent surveys showed Israelis trusting the security establishment to lead the war effort, but not Netanyahu.
"The failure of Oct 7 is his legacy. Whatever success Israel will have in the aftermath will not be ascribed to him."
Netanyahu has vowed to control security in Gaza indefinitely, adding uncertainty to the fate of an enclave where for seven weeks Israel was on the attack before forging a temporary truce with Hamas and the freeing of hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian detainees from Israel.
Some 14,800 Palestinians have been killed due to Israeli bombing and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Israel's longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu has survived many a political crisis, staged several comebacks, and need not face another election for three years if his coalition remains in tact.
Meanwhile, slim, tall and blue-eyed with an easy way about him, Gantz, 64, joined an Israeli war cabinet that Netanyahu formed days after the Hamas attack to unite the country behind a campaign to destroy Hamas and retrieve the hostages.
With nearly 40 years in the military, the centrist Gantz offers Netanyahu and his rightist Likud party a more stable government that reduces the influence of far-right and religious coalition partners on the fringes of Israeli society.
United in war, perhaps, they are at odds politically. He, Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant of Likud have together held press conferences. A photo of one such event that went viral on social media captured Netanyahu alone, and Gallant and Gantz standing together off to the side.
A Nov 16 opinion poll found the Netanyahu-led coalition that won 64 seats in a November 2022 election would garner 45 in the 120-member Knesset today compared with 70 seats of parties led by Gantz's National Unity Party, enough to assume power.
The writer is from Reuters
