The majority of Israelis – 68% - believe Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz handled Operation Breaking Dawn, the extensive Israeli counterterrorism campaign against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, well, a Channel 12 News poll showed Monday.
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Only 19% said Lapid handled the situation "poorly." Gantz, a former IDF chief of staff, handled the situation well according to 73% of respondents, while 16% said the opposite.
Asked how emerged from the three-day conflict with the upper hand, 68% said Israel, 5% said the PIJ, 10% said they tied, and 17% were undecided.
The campaign, however, did little to create a dramatic shift in the political blocs ahead of the Nov. 1 elections.
Channel 12 News found that were elections held at this time, Likud would win 34 Knesset seats and Lapid's Yesh Atid – 24. The joint Blue and White-New Hope slate was projected to secure 12 seats, followed by Religious Zionist Party (10), Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas (8), Ashkenazi Haredi party United Torah Judaism (7), the Joint Arab List (6), Yisrael Beytenu (5), Labor (5), Ra'am (5) and Meretz (4).
The Zionist Spirit party led by former Yamina MK Ayelet Shaked is not expected to cross the four-seat electoral threshold.
These results give the right-wing bloc 59 Knesset seats – two short of the 61-seat majority necessary to form a government – and 55 seats to the Center-Left bloc, excluding the Joint Arab List, which is unlikely to join any coalition.
Asked who they believe would make a better prime minister, 42% of the respondents named former PM Benjamin Netanyahu and 31% Lapid. Asked to choose between Netanyahu and Gantz, 43% favored Netanyahu and 23% opted for Gantz.
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