Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime minister in the history of Israel. The leader of the Likud party has broken this record thanks to a combination of pragmatism and a remarkable ability to recover from setbacks, build coalitions, and navigate the turbulence and fragmentation of Israel’s domestic political scene. Netanyahu’s long political career, however, has also been characterized by extreme and divisive statements, controversial domestic and foreign policies, and a personal conduct that has exposed him to charges of corruption.
Benjamin Netanyahu first surged to the position of prime minister in 1996, in a campaign marked by his vocal opposition to the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords that had launched an Israeli-Palestinian peace process based on the “Two State Solution” – the plan to favor the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem alongside Israel. Since the late 1990s, his political fortunes have known ups and downs. From 2009 onward, however, Netanyahu has established an unchallenged leadership over the Likud and turned his party into a key player in the Israeli political arena – a success that repeatedly put him in a position to lead the country’s government.
Netanyahu’s latest electoral success was achieved in late 2022, when he managed to come back to power in the aftermath of the collapse of a broad but heterogeneous governmental coalition that had led the country between 2021 and 2022. Thanks to his ability to forge an unprecedented alliance with nationalist and religious forces, Netanyahu engineered the most right-wing government in the history of Israel. The new coalition enjoyed a solid majority of 64 seats out of 120 in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Netanyahu’s Likud party obtained half of those seats, but his nationalist and religious allies became essential to the survival of the government.
The cohesion of this coalition has been repeatedly strained by internal and external challenges. Each time, Netanyahu has managed to find a way to keep his government together, but this success has constantly implied problematic decisions and contentious compromises. Netanyahu’s controversial plan to reform Israel’s justice system, for example, drew thousands of Israeli citizens to the streets throughout 2023 and dominated the country’s political debate until the issue was overshadowed by the October 7 attacks. Many Israelis feared that the reform project advanced by the Netanyahu government would undermine the independence of the country’s judicial branch, particularly the Supreme Court’s ability to guarantee the protection of Israel’s civil liberties and democratic institutions.
The October 7 terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas and other terrorist organizations against Israel represented a blow to the government and Netanyahu himself. The prime minister had cultivated for years an image of “Mister Security” that was severely undermined by the failure to protect Israel on that tragic day. Politically, however, the terrorist threat helped Netanyahu consolidate his parliamentary majority by offering a cabinet position to Benny Gantz – the leader of the Kahol Lavan party, a political formation that had been in the opposition until October 2023. Even that move, however, created new challenges for the coalition, since Gantz – a retired army general – criticized the military approach adopted by the government in relation to the intervention in Gaza. Gantz was particularly critical about the government’s lack of vision concerning the post-conflict situation and the ambiguity of the executive regarding the prospect of withdrawing from the Gaza Strip after the end of military operations. The result of these disagreements was a crisis that eventually led to Gantz’s departure from the cabinet in June 2024, followed in November of the same year by another crisis that persuaded Netanyahu to replace his Defense minister – Yoav Gallant – with Israel Katz, who had until then served as Foreign minister. Gallant, a prominent member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, had been critical of some aspects of the intervention in Gaza. The war also heated an internal debate over the distribution of the burden of defending the country. Ultra-orthodox Jews – the Haredim – have traditionally been exonerated from military service. The persistent state of conflict generated by the October 7 attacks has forced Israel’s polity to consider a change in that policy, and in June 2024 Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of ending the exemption. This change, however, was strongly opposed by Netanyahu’s religious allies and led to protests and the arrest of members of the Haredi community who resisted the draft.
The war in Gaza has thus been the most salient challenge faced by Netanyahu in his effort to manage his coalition government as well as the parliamentary majority behind it. The prime minister, however, demonstrated remarkable political skills and started 2025 with a parliamentary majority that is slightly larger than the one that emerged from the 2022 election. The November 2024 crisis and the cabinet reshuffle gave Netanyahu the opportunity to enlarge and consolidate the parliamentary majority in favor of his government by offering the post of Foreign minister to Gideon Saar, the leader of New Hope, who had joined the majority in September 2024 along with the 3 elected members of Parliament from his party.
This balancing act, however, has reinforced an intransigent position in relation to the war, with some members of the government coalition pushing for a continuation of operations even against the advice of Israel’s military leaders. The military intervention in Gaza has thus continued with massive intensity in spite of the staggering number of civilian victims and the increasing evidence that the strategy is failing to achieve Israel’s goals of destroying Hamas, “deradicalizing” Gaza, and bringing home the hostages. Although the military operations have led to a substantial degradation of Hamas’s military capabilities in the Gaza Strip as well as to the killing of several its leaders – including Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, and Mohamed Deif – experts estimate that the terrorist group has managed to recruit new militants and reassert its presence in areas that had been cleared by Israeli forces. At the same time, the Gaza war has expanded into a multi-front military confrontation involving Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Iran. This escalation has, among other things, stretched to the limit Israel’s resources and is creating serious short and long term challenges to the country’s economy.
The continuation of the war in Gaza has also erected major obstacles to the return of the hostages. This development has become another difficult internal political challenge for Netanyahu. Military force has not proved effective at liberating the Israelis kidnapped by Hamas and other terrorist organizations on October 7. Only a small number of hostages have been saved during military operations, while the vast majority were freed thanks to ceasefires and negotiations, such as the short ceasefire of November 2023 – which led to the release of over 100 hostages – and the January 19 ceasefire – which brought back 33 Israelis and 5 Thai hostages. This situation has generated intense desperation among the families of the hostages and protests throughout the country. In September 2024, thousands of Israelis participated in mass protests in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other cities, to show solidarity for the hostages and their families, and to express a widespread sentiment that the government’s uncompromising attitude is prolonging the suffering of the hostages.
The hostage issue is also contributing to the erosion of Netanyahu’s public image. The shock created by the terrorist attacks has led to a major soul-searching within Israel’s security apparatus. The Shin Bet – Israel’s internal security agency – recently published a report that documented the most important intelligence failures leading to the October 7 tragedy. Netanyahu has persistently refused to admit any mistake concerning the attacks and has opposed an inquiry into the shortcomings of Israel’s political leadership. This attitude helped him deflect criticism in the aftermath of the attacks and improve his performance in opinion polls. Recently, however, several signs suggest that Netanyahu’s popularity has started eroding again, and a March 2025 poll by the Israel Democracy Institute indicated that a substantial majority of Israelis supported both the ceasefire and the effort to release all hostages, while an equally strong majority of respondents expected Netanyahu to resign immediately or after the end of the war. This sentiment, however, clashes with the prime minister’s personal legal troubles.
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu – and for former Defense minister Yoav Gallant plus some now defunct Hamas leaders – in relation to alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in the context of the war in Gaza. Netanyahu, moreover, has also been under investigation for corruption in Israel for several years. These corruption accusations were formalized in 2019 and since then a trial against the leader of the Likud party has slowly begun and moved forward. Netanyahu has been accused of having used his political power to obtain gifts and favorable media coverage from Israeli and foreign business and media tycoons. The trial is set to reach a crucial phase in 2025, and Netanyahu has already been summoned to court a number of times since the beginning of the year. At the same time, some of his aides are suspected of having received illegal payments from the Qatari government, altered official records, and leaked classified information to further the prime minister’s political agenda.
This acceleration in the legal proceedings against the prime minister has developed in parallel to a revamp in the clash between the Netanyahu government and Israel’s security and judicial establishment. This internal institutional dispute has been compounded by the collapse of the precarious ceasefire with Hamas and a resumption of military operations in Gaza. In March, Netanyahu announced his decision to remove the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, and then his cabinet moved to dismiss attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara. The Shin Bet is, among other things, investigating some of Netanyahu’s aides who are implicated in the “Qatargate” and other scandals. In the meantime, the Israeli military resumed military operations in the Gaza Strip – thus putting an end to the US-brokered ceasefire and the negotiations that had been started in January – thanks to mediation by the outgoing Biden administration and pressure from the then incoming Trump administration. Israel’s goals seem to revolve around putting pressure on Hamas to release the remaining hostages and creating buffer zones inside the Gaza Strip in order to limit movement for Hamas leaders. Israeli operations, however, have been rather indiscriminate and casualty-intensive. Supplies of fuel, food, and medical products have been interrupted, and the victims of Israeli strikes include large numbers of children and medical personnel. Military operations have also generated new massive internal displacements. This renewed state of internal and external tension appears to have boosted the cohesion of Netanyahu’s government coalition. This quest to ensure political stability, however, is having a tragic impact on the population of Gaza and the fate of the hostages. In the meantime, Israel’s society is becoming more and more polarized, the country’s economy is in an increasingly critical situation, and the path to an end of the war in Gaza remains undefined.
The prime minister and this coalition appear to be in a favorable position on the international arena. The new US administration led by Donald Trump shares many key aspects of the political outlook and agenda of Netanyahu’s right-wing government. The prime minister visited the White House on April 7 and received a warm welcome by president Trump. The increasingly rigid position of Netanyahu’s government, however, might complicate the US-Israeli relationship in the Trump era. Israel has been hit by a now suspended 17% tariff, and – contrary to Netanyahu’s wishes – president Trump has announced that the US will hold direct talks with Iran on the contentious issue of the Tehran regime’s nuclear program.
Since coming back into office in December 2022, Netanyahu’s controversial but effective political skills have allowed him to ensure the stability of an unprecedented right-wing coalition government, face a vocal domestic protest movement, absorb the October 7, 2023 attacks, and articulate his country’s response to the terrorist threat posed by Hamas and other terrorist groups. Netanyahu’s remarkable political survival skills, however, have exacted a tremendous cost for the population of Gaza as well as the Israeli hostages captured during the October 7 terrorist attacks. Netanyahu’s government has also contributed to the increasing polarization of Israel’s society and raised concerns about the future of the country’s liberal and democratic institutions. Netanyahu’s constant quest to preserve his government coalition and deal with domestic political challenges, moreover, is narrowing the range of options to end the Gaza conflict and is creating long-term challenges that might undermine the dynamism and success of Israel’s economy.
Diego Pagliarulo