Netanyahu Faces Uphill Battle To Keep His Job
The wildly unpopular premier is running again in October.
Reuters (“Netanyahu, Israel’s arch-survivor, set to face voter fury over Iran deal“):
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes of clinging to power in an election this autumn have long been shaky, but the interim U.S. deal with Iran has added yet another complication.
U.S. President Donald Trump has opted to end the wars in Iran and Lebanon long before Israel’s goals were accomplished, and Netanyahu’s boast in March that “we are changing the face of the Middle East” looks increasingly empty.
Already facing corruption allegations, domestic political controversies and criticism over security failings in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, he will now face voters’ judgement of his handling of the wars and Israel’s relationship with the United States, its most important ally.
Netanyahu, 76, confirmed this week he intends to stand again in an election that must be called by October.
Opinion polls put his right-wing coalition on course to lose but, in a parliamentary system he has dominated for long stretches since the 1990s, few Israelis would entirely discount him weaving together a new government.
However the election unfolds, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, whom supporters once called “King Bibi”, is already the most consequential leader of recent Israeli history and the object of boundless fury to critics.
Netanyahu’s Likud party portrays him as the security hawk who staved off demands for a Palestinian state while urging attacks on Israel’s enemy, Iran, and its regional proxies. “There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu said in 2025, adding “for years I have prevented the creation of that terror state, against tremendous pressure”.
His hawkish image was dented by security failings before the Hamas attack, for which he has not taken responsibility, and by wars that brought military successes but no lasting victories. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza and Lebanon, and Israel’s military death toll is at its highest in decades.
Domestic critics say Netanyahu focused security away from the Gaza border and disregarded Hamas as a real threat.
Although Israelis mostly backed the war in Gaza, many turned against Netanyahu’s handling of it. Some prominent generals and families of hostages were among critics who said he lacked a clear strategic plan.The killings of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were celebrated in Israel. But Hamas still controls much of Gaza, revolutionary theocrats still rule Iran and Hezbollah has survived in Lebanon.
“Netanyahu lost the war. Netanyahu did not deliver – at the moment of truth he collapsed,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said after Trump imposed a new Israel-Hezbollah truce as part of his deal with Iran.
Netanyahu decries such criticism as part of a campaign to diminish Israel’s accomplishments. Warning of a potential nuclear threat from Iran, he said: “If we had not acted in time and with overwhelming force – we would not be here today.”
I would certainly not count him out. His ability to survive puts the cockroach to shame. He’s headed Likud, aside from a short break after his first stint as prime minister, for well over three decades. And he’s held his current position, which he first held from 1996 to 1999, for all but 18 months since 2009.
Along the way, he’s survived multiple corruption charges, war crimes charges, and spats with multiple American presidents.
Still, while the Israeli public overwhelmingly supported a salted earth approach to the Gaza War, they grew tired of it. Similarly, while they supported his aggressive—and largely successful—approach to Iran, the latest round has clearly been a disaster.
It’s not at all clear, though, who else has the popularity to put together a governing coalition.
Revolutionary theocrats in Iran is such a mindless view of reality. Netanyahu saying without that without the current war Iran would have used their totally existent nukes is more doctrinal crazy than anything ‘the mullahs’ have on hand.
I also doubted the claims that Orban was going down. And the elections in Hungary are way more rigged than in Israel.
The opposition, is opposed to Bibi, not the government’s policies in general. Whatever the next government is, Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Iran and the remainder of the country’s “near abroad,” will mostly continue with adjustments.
Indeed. But ETTD.
@gVOR10:
ETTD is what Bibi is too arrogant and full of himself to notice.
Saw a clip of an insane person on MSNBC ranting about how Hezbollah is being emboldened by this deal, and it underlines how much of the American establishment’s foreign policy views are the equivalent of being transfixed by motocross guys doing backflips in front of the White House.
When I grew up, the Middle East (aside from Israel) was considered nuts. Just crazy fanatical mobs and terrorists with masks on and irrational violence. With Gaza and the Occupationa and this war, America and Israel have turned into incomprehensible fanatics and Iran into the side of reason. Meanwhile, Israel is not going to pull out of Lebanon, and they and America are going to sound crazier and crazier.
@Modulo Myself:
Some fun facts:
* Hezbollah is the sectarian party/militia of Lebanon’s Shiites and enjoys significant support among this group because Hezbollah prevented them from being slaughtered by the local Christians and Sunnis not so very long ago.
* Lebanon’s Shiites mostly live in the south of the country, which is now being occupied by Israel.
* Hezbollah didn’t even exist before Israel’s 1982 invasion/attempt to install a fascist Christian regime in Lebanon.
And now Hezbollah is being “emboldened” by the occupying power (hopefully) leaving the places where these people actually live? Christ.
I bet this asshole also claims that “we have been at war with Iran for forty years,” pretending that history started in 1979 instead of, let’s say, 1953.
“They hate us for our freedoms.” Sure, buddy.
None of this means that Hezbollah are necessarily the good guys (often they are not), but they’re doing their thing for pretty understandable reasons.