Netanyahu’s ability to reach out to the Israeli public through his perceived ideological and personal closeness to Trump has long been a strong trump card, as most Israelis value American support above all else.
By Aluf BENN
In his successful bid to become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has exploited his most valuable asset: the country’s powerless opposition. He has pitted his opponents against each other, remaining in power while they remain powerless and irrelevant.
Netanyahu has survived several corruption cases, an ongoing criminal trial, and repeated elections. Even after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which led to the longest, bloodiest, and most destructive war in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the opposition has failed to pose a political threat to Netanyahu. This week, Israel continues its expanded offensive in Gaza, alongside a heavy bombing campaign. Rather than take responsibility for the unprecedented tragedy and be shamefully dismissed from office, the prime minister has become even more powerful, expanding his governing coalition, denying any responsibility for the disaster, and dismissing the heads of the military and intelligence services.
Israel’s political opposition suffers from a fundamental contradiction. While Netanyahu’s power base is united around a shared ideology that privileges Jewish rights and the creation of a Greater Israel, the other side is divided into different, even opposing, goals. There are right-wing opponents who support Netanyahu’s nationalist policies but detest his leadership. There are centrists and left-wing Zionists who dream of a liberal, secular, and modernized country. And there are representatives of Israel’s Arab minority who demand equal statehood.
During the 2021 elections, Netanyahu’s opponents from the Zionist right, center, and left united and included an Arab party in the coalition, managing to form a “change” government under the leadership of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. Unfortunately, their achievement was short-lived. To hide their ideological differences, the change government partners agreed to avoid the country’s deepest issues: the Palestinian question and the role of religion in public life. But ignoring the larger national problems was a temporary solution, and the government collapsed, leading to early elections the following year.
Instead of uniting during this campaign, Netanyahu’s opponents became even more divided as he worked hard to win every possible vote from the right. The inevitable result was a landslide victory for Netanyahu’s bloc, made up of his Likud party and its far-right and ultra-Orthodox partners.
After taking office, Netanyahu wasted no time in launching his “coup d’état,” pushing through changes that weakened the judiciary and state institutions in order to gain more power. When war broke out, Netanyahu was initially shaken, but he never lost his political acumen. He split the main opposition party, appointing rivals to the cabinet and cabinet, and expanding his coalition majority.
His war policy has been extremely popular among Israel’s Jewish majority. Calls for mass starvation, destruction, and expulsion of Palestinians in Gaza have become part of the mainstream discourse. There has been opposition over the fate of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, for whom Netanyahu refuses to make any swaps in return for a halt to the war and the withdrawal of the Israeli military from Gaza. The hostages’ families and the freed ones themselves have become the center of attention, rather than the formal opposition leader. The Arab population has supported an immediate ceasefire, but has been silenced by a crackdown on freedom of expression. Recently, when Netanyahu proposed allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, his far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, called it a “grave mistake.” There have also been increasing voices against expanding the war and against a total occupation of Gaza, but Netanyahu is paying more attention to criticism coming from within his base.
The battered opposition and its supporters are clinging to two glimmers of hope: a coalition breakup and an alternative leadership. The coalition is fractured by the exclusion of the ultra-Orthodox community from military service. The army needs recruits to fill its ranks in a seemingly endless war, and religious Zionists — a dominant demographic in the fighting forces — resent this apparent injustice. Netanyahu has managed to convince both religious parties that if the coalition breaks up in this clash, they will lose power.
The other hope is a new leadership. The rising star of the opposition is former Prime Minister Bennett, a right-wing figure who appeals to disillusioned Netanyahu voters. Sensing the shift in public opinion to the right and to overcome his previous weakness, he announced that his next coalition would not include an Arab party. On the other hand, Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats, a former general in the Israel Defense Forces and a hero of October 7, has united the Zionist left. He has called for an end to the war, expressed support for a two-state solution (although “not now”) and declared a willingness to cooperate with an Arab party.
Despite their growing popularity, both Bennett and Golan must win the acceptance and support of other opposition parties and leaders. And, most importantly, they must offer a compelling vision for post-war Israel – a vision of healing social divisions, rebuilding shattered border communities, strengthening civil rights and state institutions, and reviving a peace process.
Such a hopeful political platform would have until recently been considered impossible in a war-torn Israel, where the media continues to replay the horror of October 7. But in recent days, “anti-Bibi” Israelis have discovered a new and surprising ally: Donald Trump. The US president has suddenly emerged as a Regional peace broker and negotiator, bypassing the Israeli prime minister in his broad diplomatic campaign, in which American envoys are negotiating directly with Israel’s main enemies in Iran, Yemen and Hamas.
Netanyahu’s ability to reach out to the Israeli public through his perceived ideological and personal proximity to Trump has long been a strong trump card, as most Israelis value American support above all else. But now, closely aligned with his far-right partners to escalate the war, Netanyahu’s policies have become an obstacle to Pax Trumpiana in the Middle East.
Will the president’s cold stance toward his former ally give new life to Israel’s “anti-Bibists”?