JERUSALEM — At Jerusalem’s bustling Mahane Yehuda market, a traditional bastion of support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party, Israeli divisions played out among the fruit and vegetable stalls on Sunday as Mr. Netanyahu departed for Washington with plans to deliver a contentious speech on the Iranian nuclear threat before a joint meeting of Congress.
“This is the best step he could take,” Avraham Levy, 63, a merchant, said of the speech in which Mr. Netanyahu is expected to deliver a strong warning against a possible deal being discussed to limit Iran’s nuclear activities. The address has set Mr. Netanyahu on a collision course with the Obama administration.
“When six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust nobody came and saved us,” Mr. Levy said as he sold bananas and avocados below a fading portrait of Menachem Begin, the Likud founder who became the first Likud prime minister. “We were slaughtered like sheep. We can only rely on ourselves,” he said. If Mr. Netanyahu could persuade a few Democrats to cross the aisle, Mr. Levy added, perhaps the whole Iran deal could be thwarted.
Rivka Alkalai, 84, a retired civil servant who defined herself as a centrist on the Israeli political map, shook her head and tut-tutted in disapproval.
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And for many Israeli voters, there are more immediate concerns. As Mr. Netanyahu was preparing to leave for Washington a few hundred chemical industry workers from southern Israel were demonstrating outside his residence to protest against recent mass layoffs. One placard read, “Bibi, unemployment in the Negev is the real threat,” and another, “Bibi, we will die of hunger before Iran.”
“The speech to Congress is important,” said Ilan Hajaj, 51, a father of four who had just lost his job. “But at the moment, the war for us is at home.”
Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting.
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