There are politicians who govern a country for a season, and others who become inseparable from the country's account of itself. Benjamin Netanyahu belongs to the second class. For more than thirty years he has stood at the centre of Israeli politics, sometimes in office, sometimes in opposition, nearly always defining the argument. His admirers regard him as the statesman who protected a threatened nation, gave it economic strength and forced the world to recognise its permanence. His opponents see a leader who confused the survival of the state with his own political survival and left behind a republic more divided than he found it.
The parliamentary election of 27 October 2026 has placed both judgments before the country. Likud won 27 seats, making it the largest single party in the Knesset. Yet Netanyahu's wider bloc secured only 53 seats in a chamber of 120. It is a formidable representation, but no majority. His principal challenger, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, emerged with a competing alliance, while Arab parties held seats that could prove decisive in the making of a government. By 5 November, 67 newly elected legislators had recommended Eisenkot to President Isaac Herzog, against 46 who favoured Netanyahu. The President had not yet appointed the next prospective prime minister.
It would therefore be premature to write Netanyahu's political obituary. Israeli coalitions have often confounded their authors. A defeat at the ballot box need not be a final departure from power, and a man who has returned from political exile before cannot be dismissed while he retains substantial support. What has already happened is sufficiently momentous. The governing majority on which his last administration depended has gone. Israel must decide whether it wishes to continue living under the political arrangements that Netanyahu established.
The young diplomat and the making of a political fighter
Born in Tel Aviv in 1949, Netanyahu grew up in a family profoundly conscious of Jewish history and the insecurity that had attended Jewish life. His father, Benzion Netanyahu, was a historian whose outlook helped inform his son's understanding of nationalism and historical danger. The younger Netanyahu spent part of his youth in the United States, acquired an ease with American political language and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served in an Israeli special forces unit before entering public life.
The death of his elder brother Yonatan during the 1976 Entebbe rescue operation became a permanent element of the family's public story. It also gave Benjamin Netanyahu a personal connection with a subject on which he would build much of his career. Terrorism, national strength and the necessity of military readiness became the foundations of his political message. He spoke of danger with the conviction of a man who believed that history offered abundant proof of what happened to the unprepared.
His years as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988 displayed another quality that served him well. He could address an American audience almost as naturally as an Israeli one. Television suited his crisp argument, his command of English and his habit of treating foreign criticism as something to be answered forcefully rather than accommodated. He entered the Knesset in 1988, became leader of Likud in 1993 and defeated Shimon Peres in 1996 to become prime minister. The first administration lasted until 1999, but the foundations of a far longer career had been laid.
How Netanyahu changed the Israeli state
Netanyahu returned to power in 2009 and remained prime minister until 2021. After a brief interval in opposition, he regained office in December 2022. These terms, taken together, made him the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history. Longevity by itself is neither an achievement nor a failure, but it grants a politician the opportunity to alter the habits of a nation. Netanyahu used that opportunity vigorously.
As finance minister between 2003 and 2005, he supported market-oriented reforms, privatisation and restrictions on public expenditure. His admirers credit his economic philosophy with helping Israel develop the confidence and conditions associated with a powerful technology industry. The country became known internationally for advanced research, cybersecurity, defence technology and entrepreneurial ambition. Yet prosperity did not visit every household equally. Housing costs, inequality and the difficulty faced by ordinary families in major cities remained persistent sources of dissatisfaction.
His larger political achievement was to make the language of security the ordinary grammar of government. He argued that Israel inhabited a neighbourhood in which misplaced trust could be fatal. Iran's nuclear programme, armed groups on Israel's borders and the possibility of another mass attack were presented not as separate problems but as parts of a continuous struggle for national existence. Supporters saw in this an unsentimental recognition of reality. Critics believed it had the further effect of making almost every domestic disagreement subordinate to the judgment of the man in office.
The distinction matters. Governments must provide security, especially where threats are grave. But a political culture in which every opponent may be accused of endangering the country becomes inhospitable to compromise. Over time, disputes about budgets, judicial powers, relations with Palestinians and the privileges of religious communities acquired the bitterness of arguments over national loyalty.
The Palestinian question he never settled
Of all the questions that accompanied Netanyahu through his years in office, none was more consequential than the future of the Palestinians. His governments opposed many of the concessions that advocates of a negotiated two-state settlement considered essential. Settlement activity in the occupied West Bank continued, and Israeli politics moved steadily towards factions that questioned whether an independent Palestinian state should ever come into being.
The policy was defended as a necessary precaution. Israel had withdrawn settlements from Gaza in 2005 and subsequently confronted Hamas, which took control of the territory in 2007. Netanyahu and his allies argued that further withdrawals could create additional security threats. Their critics answered that permanent control over millions of Palestinians without an agreed political future could not provide a durable peace and would corrode Israel's democratic claim.
The resulting system was neither peace nor a recognised final settlement. It was an arrangement of checkpoints, military authority, settlements, restricted movement, recurring violence and diplomatic statements about a future that grew increasingly remote. It enabled successive governments to postpone the most difficult choices. It did not eliminate the grievances, the armed movements or the human cost.
Gaza and the collapse of the promise of security
The Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 broke the central promise on which Netanyahu had constructed his public reputation. Approximately 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 251 were taken hostage. The killings of civilians and the taking of hostages were crimes of extraordinary cruelty. Israeli society was convulsed by grief, fear and anger. Families demanded the return of their relatives. The government declared war.
Israel's military campaign in Gaza brought immense destruction and civilian suffering. Entire neighbourhoods were damaged or reduced to ruins. Displacement became an experience shared by much of Gaza's population. The collapse of medical services and repeated restrictions on relief raised urgent questions about the conduct of the war. The Israeli government maintained that its operations were directed against Hamas, which operated within densely populated territory and bore responsibility for the initial attacks. That assertion did not remove Israel's obligations under the laws of war.
Netanyahu insisted that military pressure was necessary to defeat Hamas and secure Israel's future. But the longer the war continued, the harder it became to define victory in terms that the public could understand. The destruction of military infrastructure was measurable in part. The elimination of an ideology, the restoration of confidence in government and the construction of a workable political order were vastly more difficult.
For many Israelis, the question gradually ceased to be whether Hamas had to be confronted. It became whether the prime minister had mistaken military persistence for a political programme. The anguish of hostage families added a further charge to the national debate. Their demand was not an abstract diplomatic formula. It was the return of sons, daughters, parents and friends.
The international courts and the burden of accusation
The war also placed Netanyahu under an unprecedented degree of international legal scrutiny. In November 2024 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant in connection with alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. The warrants are not findings of guilt. Israel rejected the court's jurisdiction and disputed the allegations. The distinction between accusation and conviction is fundamental, but the existence of such warrants has serious consequences for a leader's international standing and freedom of travel.
Separately, the International Court of Justice considered proceedings brought by South Africa under the Genocide Convention. Its provisional measures addressed the risk of irreparable harm and duties concerning protection and humanitarian assistance. Those decisions did not constitute a final ruling that genocide had occurred. The legal processes nevertheless demonstrated how far the conflict had carried Israel into confrontation with institutions whose authority many governments regard as indispensable.
In foreign capitals, the familiar description of Israel as an embattled democracy increasingly existed beside images of devastation in Gaza. Friendly governments faced questions from their own voters about military assistance, arms transfers and diplomatic protection. Netanyahu's answer was often to accuse critics of overlooking Israel's vulnerability. That vulnerability was real. So too was the suffering of Palestinian civilians. Serious statesmanship required acknowledgment of both.
The courts, the streets and the crisis within Israel
Netanyahu's most bitter domestic struggle before the Gaza war concerned the judiciary. His coalition's proposed judicial changes in 2023 provoked enormous demonstrations. Protesters warned that weakening judicial checks would imperil democratic government in a country without a single entrenched written constitution. Supporters of the proposals argued that unelected judges had accumulated excessive influence and frustrated the authority of elected representatives.
The dispute reached into the armed forces, universities, professional associations and ordinary families. Reservists voiced alarm. Business leaders warned of the damage that political instability could cause. The Supreme Court later struck down a central part of the overhaul. The controversy disclosed a division much deeper than disagreement over judicial appointments. Israelis were arguing about the kind of state they wished to inhabit and the limits that should bind a parliamentary majority.
