After Ben-Gurion airport crisis, Netanyahu must placate thousands of raging voters - analysis

ByLIAT RONAUGUST 21, 2026 09:38In May 1946, less than a year after the end of World War II, the United States was trying to return to normal life. The economy was struggling to recover, inflation was surging, and workers were demanding wage increases after the war years. Then the trains stopped. A nationwide strike paralyzed the transportation of food, coal, and passengers, and for two days an entire country almost came to a standstill.As the trains remained idle, a blame battle began at the highest levels of American leadership. Workers accused railroad companies of raking in profits during the war while refusing to pay them more. The companies accused unions of extortion and irresponsibility. US president Harry Truman accused both sides of "stabbing the nation in the back" and threatened to draft railroad workers into the military to force them back to work. Congress, meanwhile, accused Truman of dictatorial actions and violating the Constitution, while he responded by accusing lawmakers of blocking emergency legislation for political reasons. As the public was left without transportation and supplies, everyone was mostly busy explaining who was to blame.Eighty years have passed since then. The trains have been replaced by planes, the US has been replaced by Israel, but one thing has not changed. Everyone is still passing the buck. Not just the thin cigarettes that help people deal with the unbearable stress in this country, but responsibility itself. Since the strike that paralyzed Ben-Gurion Airport, everyone involved has been explaining how everyone else is at fault and they are the victim of the circumstances.Everyone is right, everyone warned, everyone tried to prevent the incident, and yet our skies were closed again. This time, to our regret, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Jolani, and Erdogan cannot be blamed. An Israeli, blue-and-white failure is responsible. The question now is who is the weakest link in the food chain and will end up paying the price.The workers blame management, which in turn blames them and insists it reported the staffing shortage to Transportation Minister Miri Regev in real time. Regev, who just a day earlier praised, celebrated, and elevated port workers at a ceremony marking the launch of the Morocco route, which she used as an opportunity for a light vacation with senior ministry officials, threatened, from Morocco, that whoever was responsible would be fired.Passengers scramble at Ben-Gurion Airport after a staff strike halted Israeli air travel, August 20, 2026 (credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/MAARIV)Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stood beside her, basking in the moment, praised them even further, because those who carry passengers' luggage on their backs for 12 hours in this heat really do deserve appreciation, as do those flying off for a family beach vacation with their children. He did not imagine that at that very moment he was standing before the people who would, less than 24 hours later, deliver a massive blow to the Likud election campaign, which had only just begun after a stormy primary.Netanyahu cannot ignore hundreds of thousands of angry votersThis is not a localized crisis that can be solved with a creative video on social media. This involves hundreds of thousands of people who paid a lot of money for their annual family vacations, were already in the mindset of being abroad, and then found themselves stuck for hours in crowded airport terminals with their children, now looking for someone to vent their anger at.Coalition funds worth hundreds of millions can be brushed aside with ease. Even a draft exemption law can disappear behind a sophisticated spin and determined statements promising exactly the opposite. But try dealing with hundreds of thousands of voters who lost money on a hotel they will not reach, attractions they already paid for, and hours of a crying baby who does not understand what is happening.Netanyahu understands this very well. He has already found the scapegoat who will be placed on the altar, the person everyone currently hates and is ready to roast themselves. That person, of course, is Airports Authority workers' committee chairman Pinchas Idan.The message from above already came out last night. Netanyahu instructed officials to work toward removing Idan from his membership in Likud, following a party statement describing the event as "the wild and illegal strike at the airport that harmed the citizens of the country and damaged the economy." And so, within a matter of hours, one of the strongest and most veteran figures at Ben-Gurion Airport became the person on whom all responsibility for the incident could be placed.And Idan really is a veteran. Very much so. He started from the bottom, on the ground, was first elected to the workers' committee in 1982 and was elected to lead the general committee in 1986. Since then, CEOs, transportation ministers, and prime ministers have come and gone, but Idan remained. For nearly 40 years, he has controlled one of the strongest labor committees in the economy, with a proven ability to bring the public to a standstill at its most sensitive point.But Idan is not only a union leader. He is also a longtime Likud member, a party central committee member, served as mayor of Lod from 1998 to 2000, and over the years built a disciplined network of thousands of party members behind him. In other words, he was not just another central committee member who could be ignored, but a power center that Likud politicians knew well and generally preferred not to confront.Idan orders flights halted following Gallant's dismissalThis is also not the first time Idan has angered his own party. In March 2023, following Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's dismissal and the Histadrut labor federation's announcement of a general strike, he ordered flights from Ben-Gurion Airport to be halted. At the time, he managed to survive the internal anger. This time, Netanyahu is deep into an election campaign, after a turbulent primary, and has no intention of quietly absorbing such a blow to his campaign.The legal question surrounding the strike is important. Sudden labor sanctions without a prior declaration of a labor dispute can be considered illegal, but Idan claims there was no planned strike at all. According to his version, what occurred was the collapse of a system suffering from a shortage of workers.That may be a legal argument that could hold up, but it interests Netanyahu less. Eden Ben Zaken interests him more. The fact that Regev knew about the intention to shut down the airport and asked, as Idan himself said in an interview, that he wait until after the primaries and after she flew to Morocco, also does not interest him. He is not willing to lose even one angry vote, no matter what.Of course, no one should expect anyone to draw real conclusions from this incident, because investigative committees are for the weak. The Airports Authority will not conduct an internal review and try to understand how it reached the point of systemic collapse. Regev will not conduct a serious self-examination over a terrible term in office, whose only achievement has been stamping her passport every few weeks. Netanyahu sees only October 27.And Idan? No one will mourn his departure. Like in a sketch from Eretz Nehederet, his place will surely be taken by one of the dozens of his relatives who work at Ben-Gurion Airport. The only question is who. His son Shay Idan, the father of the groom Moshe Idan, or his Filipino partner, Teresa May Idan.Follow us on Google