Benjamin Netanyahu is already 73 years old and accused of corruption. In the final days of last year, he returned to the Israeli prime minister’s residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem, the only place where he can avoid serving a prison sentence. Anything but the cell could have been his motto while he was in opposition for a year and a half before a journey into the desert. After being removed from power in June 2021 with the votes of two of his conservative political dolphins, in 2023 he faced a protest movement with little precedent against judicial reform at the head of the most conservative government in the history of the State of Israel , which he enforced, again to try to get out of prison.
After the Yom Kippur War fiasco in 1973, the Israelis forced Labor Prime Minister Golda Meir from power. And four years later, an electoral reversal ended the left’s hegemony, while Netanyahu’s Likud party came to power for the first time since the birth of the Jewish state three decades earlier. “Netanyahu’s political departure is inevitable,” predicts Ami Yaalon, former head of Shabak, the state’s domestic intelligence service.
Anshel Pfeffer, Netanyahu’s biographer, pointed out in his column in the Haaretz newspaper this week that the leader will face consequences if he does not clearly state the goals of the war against Hamas. In one of the first polls released since the Gaza conflict broke out, Netanyahu is blamed for Hamas’ offensive, according to a poll by the Dialogue Center.
86% of Israelis – and 79% of supporters of the conservative ruling coalition – believe the Hamas attack represents a “failure” for the government given the “lack of preparedness” in terms of security, according to the newspaper’s data Study published by the Jerusalem Post newspaper. More than half of respondents (56%) believe Netanyahu should step down after the war ends.
The conservative leader was a survivor. “It is always premature to say goodbye to Netanyahu. His departure is not irreversible and he will continue to be very active in the opposition,” emphasized analyst and historian Meir Margalit two years ago. “He will return soon and stronger,” he then correctly predicted. The Caesarism that characterized him and his obsession with occupying power forever had led him to politically murder those who challenged him from his own center-right camp.
Benjamin Netanyahu, pictured right, in military training, in a photo from 1971.Handout (Getty Images)
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
His political heirs eventually turned against him and overthrew him after he allied with the center-left and even with an Arab party with an Islamist profile. It now faces a war against Hamas in Gaza that is already the deadliest for Israelis in half a century. This conflict threatens to become the swansong for a politician who, for three decades in power, has praised security as his greatest asset to voters.
Only the active head of government was charged with corruption
In 2019, Natanyahu erased Jewish state founder David Ben Gurion’s record in power. Known as Bibi (after his family nickname), he was also the youngest head of government (1996–1999) and the first born in the country after independence. And also the only one to be charged with corruption during his term in office.
As the grandson of a rabbi and the son of a right-wing Zionist historian, Netanyahu’s life path coincides with Israel’s history. The ascetic and collectivist nation in which she was born has become a regional hegemonic military power and a global technology leader, with a politically conservative society. He headed the government for the first time (1996-1999) following the assassination of Labor Party’s Isaac Rabin in 1995, whom he vigorously opposed for his agreement with Yasir Arafat, the historic Palestinian leader, for the establishment appointed by the Palestinian Authority. . It took ten years for him to return to power, but he maintained his official residence on Balfour Street for twelve years from 2009.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (pictured right) signs the agreements with Yasir Arafat on October 23, 1998 at the White House in the presence of US President Bill Clinton and King Hussein of Jordan. Susan Walsh (AP)
The country’s economic transformation has been one of the biggest benefits to its credit rating. However, wealth is not distributed fairly across different levels of society, as large parts of the Arab and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities live below the poverty line.
However, Netanyahu, described as an opportunist politician whose only ideology has always been to remain in power despite all odds, has expressed very precise geopolitical ideas: “In the Middle East there is a simple truth: there is no place for the weak .”, whoever you will be massacred and erased from history. The strong survive, for better or worse. They are respected and in the end they are the ones who create peace.”
As his biographer Pfeffer recalled, Netanyahu opted for a strong and developed Jewish state as early as 1993 in his book “A Place Among the Nations” to avoid international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. “The world must accept Israel’s position and remove the Palestinian issue from the agenda,” is how this expert sums up the president’s vision. His ideas appear to have been prophetic to at least normalize diplomatic relations with four Arab countries without having to pay the toll of handing over territories.
Abraham Accords
The so-called Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Gulf monarchies with which Israel already had secret relations, promoted and protected in 2020 by then US President Donald Trump, followed the recognition of the countries Sudan and Morocco with which it is in the shadows had established military cooperation. Netanyahu now hoped to conclude a mutual recognition agreement with Saudi Arabia, but Hamas’ surprise attack sabotaged the normalization of relations.
Former Labor Minister Shlomo Ben Ami now claims that the conservative leader long ago abandoned the idea of the two-state solution to limit himself to managing the day-to-day operations of the occupation, as there were no conditions to sit down and negotiate . “It has deepened the occupation and made it irreversible by expanding settlements and tolerating settler violence.” Ben Ami blames the conservative leader for the failure of the Oslo Accords agreed between Israelis and Palestinians in 1993.
From left to right: Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani (Foreign Minister of Bahrain), Benjamin Netanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister), Donald Trump (President of the United States) and Abdullah bin Zayed (Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates) sign the so-called on September 15 of 2020 Abraham Accords. Alex Wong (Getty Images)
Netanyahu had already ordered three war campaigns against the Gaza Strip: in 2012, 2014 (the most devastating to date, lasting more than two months) and 2021. While he hasn’t had to deal with a full-blown Palestinian intifada, he has had episodes of extreme violence like that Wave of knife attacks between 2015 and 2016 in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Or the demonstrations on the border with the Gaza Strip, which resulted in more than 200 Palestinian deaths from army gunfire between 2018 and 2019.
Although Netanyahu is a native Israeli who knows how to interpret the social diversity of a caste country, he can also pass as a determined American from Philadelphia or Boston, where he spent part of his childhood and studied at university. This double facet accompanied him throughout his life. He has worked with statesmen in international forums, but he walks the markets of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv with the carefree boldness of an ordinary Israeli.
Netanyahu chats with then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir during the opening session of the Madrid Conference on October 30, 1991. Dirck Halstead (Getty Images)
As deputy since 1988, he distinguished himself as an experienced public diplomacy strategist and his reputation as spokesman for the Israeli delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 became known to the world. As a minister in several important departments, as head of government he implemented constitutional reforms that marked a historic turning point. This is the case of the so-called law of the Jewish national state, a regulation that entails an impairment of the rights of minorities, such as that the Arabic language is no longer considered an official language, even though it is spoken by 20% of its inhabitants are of Palestinian origin. .
Preference for luxury and flattery
The presidential family’s love of luxury was the first clue that the anti-corruption police brigade followed when investigating corruption cases. The Netanyahus received expensive gifts – jewelry, Cohíba cigars or pink champagne – worth a million shekels (more than 250,000 euros) from Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, among others, who was able to receive several million dollars in return.
The other two cases in which the prime minister is being prosecuted have to do with the ruler’s obsession with gaining the favor of the media, which he blames for all his political misfortunes but which he shamelessly courts.
Benjamin Netanyahu celebrates his election victory with his wife Sara on November 1, 2022. Amir Levy (Getty Images)
Follow all international information on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits