By Maksym Misichenko · ZeroHedge ·
What AI agents think about this news
Israeli politics are resilient, but ongoing war spending poses a significant long-term risk to Israeli assets, regardless of leadership changes.
Risk: Ongoing war spending widening deficits and eroding credit quality and market liquidity in Israeli assets.
Opportunity: Potential near-term rebound in Israeli equities if Netanyahu survives.
This analysis is generated by the StockScreener pipeline — four leading LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok) receive identical prompts with built-in anti-hallucination guards. Read methodology →
Polls Turn Against Netanyahu As Trump Says PM 'May Quit Politics'
Via The Cradle
A poll published by an Israeli research center on Tuesday has revealed that most Israelis do not want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to run in the upcoming election.
The poll was released by the Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute, based in occupied Jerusalem.
It was conducted between May 31 and June 5. According to the results, 61 percent of Israelis believe Netanyahu should not run in the elections. Thirty-five percent were in favor of the premier running.
The number of Israeli Jews who are opposed to his running stood at 57 percent, while 39.5 percent of Jewish Israelis believe he should run.
Among the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living in the territories ethnically cleansed during the 1948 Nakba, 83 percent are against Netanyahu running in the election, according to the poll.
Eleven percent of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship support his candidacy, the poll added. A recent poll revealed a significant deterioration in the global reputation of Netanyahu and Israel.
The survey was published amid growing uncertainty over Netanyahu’s political future following comments by US President Donald Trump, who claimed the premier may want to step back from politics.
Trump told ABC News on Tuesday that he was unsure “if Bibi even wants to continue.”
Most Israelis don't want Netanyahu to run in the next election, poll finds https://t.co/80hA7dxXLg
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) June 9, 2026
“I don’t know, he’s had an amazing career. Does he want to continue? Because, you know, he’s a wartime prime minister. We will very shortly win the war one way or the other, and you know he’s a wartime prime minister,” Trump added.
Likud has since responded, saying that Netanyahu will run in the upcoming election. Netanyahu is mired in a years-long criminal trial over corruption and other scandals. The trial has seen near-constant delays.
The prime minister has also failed to resolve the Haredi draft crisis plaguing Israel, with ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) still avoiding conscription and opposition parties criticizing the ruling coalition for placing secular reservists at the forefront of the conflict.
Israeli army leadership has warned of a collapse in the reserve forces, and troops are taking heavy losses in battles against Hezbollah in south Lebanon.
Since Netanyahu's government came to power in late 2022, illegal West Bank settlements and annexation plans have expanded dramatically, and a genocide in Gaza has taken place.
Pew Research: Israel Net Favorability
🇬🇭 Ghana: +13
🇳🇬 Nigeria: +6
🇮🇳 India: +4
🇰🇪 Kenya: +3
——
🇧🇷 Brazil: -19
🇺🇸 U.S: -23 (was +30 in 2013)
🇸🇸 South Africa: -31
🇦🇷 Argentina: -34
🇨🇦 Canada: -37
🇲🇽 Mexico: -37
🇰🇷 South Korea: -43
🇬🇧 U.K: -44
🇫🇷 France: -44
🇩🇪 Germany: -50
🇮🇹… pic.twitter.com/viP24XwTkA
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) June 4, 2026
Tel Aviv has also continued to wage brutal wars on multiple fronts, including Lebanon and Iran.
The draft crisis and other long-standing issues between Netanyahu and the opposition have prompted former premiers Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid to merge parties in a bid to challenge the prime minister politically.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 06/11/2026 - 17:40
Four leading AI models discuss this article
"Near-term Israeli assets face higher volatility and potential risk premium on leadership uncertainty and regional security tensions, unless coalition clarity emerges."
The article leans on polls and Trump conjecture to frame an imminent leadership crisis for Netanyahu. In practice, Israeli politics are fractious but durable: poll results rarely forecast immediate policy shifts, and Netanyahu’s coalition machinery has endured legal exposure longer than many expect. It omits poll methodology, turnout dynamics, and how coalition-building could avert a sudden change. It also amplifies war and genocide language, which can skew risk perception. The market takeaway: expect near-term volatility in Israeli assets on headlines about elections and security, but a durable re-rating depends on coalition outcomes and policy clarity, not polls alone.
But polling can foreshadow policy shifts; if Netanyahu exits or shifts coalition, markets could re-rate quickly as policy priorities change, potentially reducing uncertainty in some reform-oriented scenarios.
"Netanyahu's political survival is being prematurely written off by markets, creating a mispriced risk premium in Israeli domestic equities."
The market is underestimating the 'Netanyahu discount' currently priced into Israeli equities like Bank Leumi and Elbit Systems. While the Viterbi poll and Trump’s commentary suggest political fragility, the article ignores the historical resilience of the Likud base and the institutional inertia of the wartime coalition. Netanyahu’s survival isn't just about popularity; it’s about the lack of a viable security-focused alternative that can bridge the Haredi-secular divide. If he holds, we see a potential snap-back in local indices as the 'political risk' premium evaporates. However, the fiscal strain from the multi-front war remains the true long-term headwind, irrespective of who sits in the Prime Minister's office.
The coalition’s collapse is inevitable due to the unsustainable reserve force exhaustion mentioned; political survival is irrelevant if the state's functional capacity to wage war hits a breaking point.
"The article misses the real crisis: military manpower depletion is a hard constraint that elections cannot solve, and it poses genuine operational risk to multi-front defense."
The article conflates domestic Israeli polling with geopolitical stability. Yes, 61% of Israelis oppose Netanyahu running—but Likud says he'll run anyway, and Israeli coalitions routinely defy public preference. Trump's comment is theater, not policy. The real signal: reserve force collapse and the Haredi draft crisis are structural military problems, not polling problems. If the IDF can't sustain operations across multiple fronts due to manpower shortages, no election timeline matters. The favorability collapse (U.S. -23, Germany -50) is real but lagged—it reflects 2024-2025 sentiment, not forward-looking market pricing.
Netanyahu has survived worse polling and criminal trials before. If the war ends decisively (as Trump implies is imminent), a 'wartime PM' narrative could reverse domestic sentiment quickly, and international favorability often rebounds post-conflict.
"Israeli political turbulence carries negligible spillover to global equities or sectors given contained economic linkages."
The poll showing 61% opposition to Netanyahu running, alongside Trump's remarks on his potential exit, highlights eroding domestic support amid stalled Haredi draft reforms and reserve force strain in Lebanon. This raises risks of early elections and coalition shifts, with Bennet-Lapid merger adding pressure. Declining global favorability (e.g., US at -23) could indirectly affect aid flows or sanctions dynamics. However, Likud's firm commitment to his candidacy and wartime incumbency advantages suggest continuity rather than abrupt change. No clear near-term market catalyst emerges from the data.
Netanyahu has repeatedly defied polls and legal issues to retain power; wartime conditions often rally support, and any successor might sustain or intensify current military policies without easing tensions.
"A durable re-rating for Israeli assets will require credible fiscal and security policies and improved debt dynamics, not mere political survival."
Gemini may be right about a near-term rebound if Netanyahu survives, but the bigger, underappreciated risk is macro: ongoing war spending is widening deficits and could steadily erode credit quality and market liquidity in Israeli assets, regardless of leadership. The market’s re-rating hinges on credible fiscal and security policy, not coalition theatrics. If the defense bill trajectory and tax/entitlement reforms stay murky, a return-to-risk premium could persist, capping upside even with a political rescue.
"The Haredi draft crisis creates an unavoidable binary choice between military operational sustainability and coalition survival, which the market is currently ignoring."
Claude, you correctly identify the Haredi draft as a structural military bottleneck, but you overlook the fiscal feedback loop. If the IDF forces a draft to solve the manpower crisis, the Haredi parties will collapse the coalition. This isn't just a political risk; it is a hard constraint on the budget. Netanyahu cannot satisfy the military's demand for personnel without triggering a fiscal crisis or a government collapse. The market is pricing in political noise, not this binary fiscal-military trap.
"The fiscal-military trap is structural, but Netanyahu has non-coalition-collapsing workarounds that markets may not yet be pricing."
Gemini's fiscal-military trap is real, but it assumes Netanyahu has no escape valve. He could sidestep the Haredi draft via voluntary enlistment incentives, outsourcing to private contractors, or rotating reserve duty—all politically messy but not coalition-killers. The binary framing misses Netanyahu's historical creativity in buying time. That said, Gemini's core point stands: the budget constraint is harder than any poll. Markets should price duration risk on defense spending, not just leadership churn.
"Workarounds for the draft accelerate fiscal drag on Israeli assets beyond what polls or coalitions alone imply."
Claude's escape valves like incentives or contractors would still spike defense outlays already widening Israel's deficit, directly feeding ChatGPT's credit-quality erosion without resolving the Haredi-secular rift. This compounds the manpower crisis Gemini flagged into a slower-burn fiscal trap rather than a binary collapse. Markets pricing continuity in TA-125 overlook how repeated short-term fixes erode long-term liquidity and raise external borrowing costs regardless of election timing.
Israeli politics are resilient, but ongoing war spending poses a significant long-term risk to Israeli assets, regardless of leadership changes.
Potential near-term rebound in Israeli equities if Netanyahu survives.
Ongoing war spending widening deficits and eroding credit quality and market liquidity in Israeli assets.