Benjamin Netanyahu is back in command of Israeli politics. He and his coalition are now polling close to where they were before the war began. They don’t yet hold a majority, but they are positioned to prevent an alternative coalition in case of elections. Bibi’s partners, religious fundamentalist settlers such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as ultra-orthodox parties and his Likud backbenchers, are firmly united behind his insistence to prolong the war. In head-to-head contests with his likely alternative, Benny Gantz, Netanyahu is now polling ahead after many months of being behind. To add to his good fortunes, the Israeli Knesset has recently gone on leave until late October after the Jewish holidays. During Knesset recess, it is practically impossible to overthrow a government.

Far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with occupation soldiers in Gaza, Dec 2023 (Photo: GPO)

This all means that Netanyahu will stay in power at least until mid-2025, if not longer. He will be welcoming either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris when they are inaugurated.

This is an impressive political comeback, even for Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. After the October 7 Hamas attack, Netanyahu was considered by many to be a dead horse. “Mr. Security,” as he branded himself for years, was responsible for the worst military defeat in Israel’s history. Under his hard-right coalition, a nonstate actor with no air force, tanks, or artillery achieved a full-blown invasion of Israel. Hamas and its partners inflicted the biggest killing spree of civilians in the country’s history in a matter of hours, under the nose of the editor of a book called Terrorism: How the West Can Win.

Netanyahu was rightly held responsible by Israeli commentators not only for the defense debacle but also for Hamas’s military build-up over decades. Throughout his time as prime minister since 2009, he empowered Hamas’s control over Gaza and actively sabotaged any effort to unify Palestinian leadership under the Palestinian Liberation Organization. This was done to prevent any prospect of Palestinian statehood, his life’s mission. In effect, he created a security threat that exploded in the face of Israeli citizens on October 7.

After that disaster, Israeli diplomatic and military reporters assumed that the war in Gaza would end after some weeks, that the “diplomatic clock” was ticking, and that at some point, Israel’s Western allies, namely the Biden administration, would make Israel stop. In November and December, as the destruction of Gaza City was underway, but the southern parts of the Strip were still relatively intact, reports circulated that the Americans were pressuring Bibi to end the war by the New Year. 

During the first hostage deal in November, dozens of Israeli women and children were released, and for about a week, no one died. The Gaza war’s days seemed to be numbered, and so was Netanyahu’s rule. He was to be replaced by a more moderate center-right coalition led by the likes of Gantz.

So how did we come from there to here? What was the role of international political actors in sustaining and resurrecting Netanyahu’s political fortunes and, with them, the wholesale destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza?

Many liberal or center-left leaders in the West explain their gentle handling of Netanyahu by arguing that if they confront him publicly or act more decisively to bring an end to the war, this will only empower Netanyahu in the eyes of the Israeli public and will give him political credit for further confrontations with the West. Biden and German chancellor Olaf Scholz are the best representatives of this bear-hug strategy toward Netanyahu.

The idea is to give Israeli policy nearly full support in public while leaking to the press that they are giving Bibi some tough talk behind closed doors. If we attack him, they say off the record, he will only become more popular, so we are making our frustration known in private conversation. This strategy, from a perspective that strives for a cease-fire as all these leaders state they are, is an abject failure: Netanyahu continues the massacre in Gaza and meanwhile recovers his political power.

This consideration of Israeli political dynamics cannot really explain Western complicity in the destruction of Gaza. We know that both the United States and Europe have geostrategic and economic interests in supporting Israel’s military effort and that there is a powerful political lobby that promotes pro-Israel positions in all relevant countries. But since the aversion to empowering Netanyahu is being made by policymakers in the places that matter, it is worth engaging with it seriously and talking about the political dynamics within Israel.

It is true that international pressure is sometimes politically beneficial for Netanyahu. Israel is a country at war, and its people have a siege mentality (ironically, given the pain it has been inflicting on Gaza for decades). Despite the unprecedented diplomatic and material support the state has received since October 7, the general sentiment in the Israeli public is that “the world is against us.” Israeli hasbara is working inward through Israel’s mainstream news channel, where the West is depicted as naive, flooded with Islamist Hamas supporters, and, in general, anti-Israeli. Criticism of Israel is conflated with antisemitism by default. The United Nations and its institutions, including the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, are seen as beholden to Arab interests and structurally biased against the Jewish state.

In this context, when Netanyahu clashes with foreign leaders, most Israelis are obviously on the side of their PM. Netanyahu has been building his persona as a unique diplomatic talent who can wrap world leaders around his fingers. To be honest, that is not so far from the truth, and when he is fending off global pressures, as he has been for the past ten months, this persona is empowered among large swaths of the Israeli public. The recent US caving on two issues — the shipment of five-hundred-pound bombs and the withholding of possible sanctions on the Netzah Yehuda battalion — are examples of Netanyahu’s case: when he stands firm, the West gives in.

On the other hand, more than half of the Israeli public sees Netanyahu as responsible for Israel’s devastation. They will not support him no matter how many standing ovations he receives in the US Congress. This popular opposition to Netanyahu is using international interventions for its benefit, often presenting itself as allied with Biden, the true friend of Israel and the Israeli hostages, against Netanyahu.

The War Is Bibi’s Lifeblood

However, the clashes with the West are secondary factors in Netanyahu’s political recovery. They are talk, and talk is cheap. The real reason for Netanyahu’s political comeback is tied to the prosecution of the war itself.

Since the outbreak of the war, he has promoted a line saying that all political criticisms and investigations of his handling in the past decade will have to wait until the war’s end. At the same time, he has been explicit that he sees no end to the war soon. His postponement of politics to the day after the war has effectively won the day in Israel. It is not that the Israeli popular opposition is not committed to taking Netanyahu down. But through a political consolidation of the Right, Bibi could make his remaining in power, a prospect seen as ludicrous last winter, seem reasonable and inevitable.

Netanyahu rallied his right-wing base around the war effort and the slogan “total victory.” Since his political coalition is based on settlers and fascists, Netanyahu understood that the only threat to his political survival lies on the Right. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir were, therefore, given a free hand to promote their agendas, including the active annexation of the West Bank and the turning of the Israeli prison system into a torture system. Most important, this tacking to the right meant delaying and rejecting any hostage/cease-fire deal.

The recent assassinations of Hamas’s Mohammed Deif in Gaza and Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, as well as Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr in Beirut, are taking “total victory” one step forward. They are celebrated on the Israeli right as signs of an imminent victory over Israel’s enemies and as examples of Israel’s unmatched capabilities. The possible widening of the conflict into a regional war with Hezbollah and Iran is being welcomed by many in the government, who see the destruction of Lebanon as the natural continuation of the destruction of Gaza.

The policy of the Israeli government is forever war. It is the key to its vision of the destruction of Gaza and the annexation of the West Bank, and it is the key to its political survival.

Rip Off Arms Like a Band-Aid

That Netanyahu will do anything to prolong the war is the missing piece in the reasoning of world leaders who are interested in ending it. This seems to stem from willful ignorance rather than naivete. Leaders such as Biden and Scholz are still acting as if, after ten months of the same maneuvering to escape a cease-fire and countless reports that Netanyahu is blocking a deal, diplomatic pressure can push through a cease-fire agreement.

But Netanyahu is not deterred by diplomatic tough talk, whether behind closed doors or in public. He is not deterred by condemnation in international bodies and not even by the UN Security Council resolution mandating an end to the war. His regime can last while he is personally being indicted for war crimes in the ICC. His right-wing coalition can survive even if the Israeli economy collapses, as signs are showing it may.

The only thing that can really defeat Netanyahu politically is the end of the war itself. This will begin a process of political pressure that will end with elections – either because the Right will desert Bibi to end the war, or because those in positions of power in Israel who accepted Netanyahu’s rule if the war was raging will make him go back to the public.

The conventional diplomatic efforts to end the war have been going on for months and are failing. Under Netanyahu, Israel will continue the war unless it cannot do so materially — that is, if the weapons supplies are cut. The United States has the power to make that happen with one move. There’s no need for a complete weapons embargo. A credible and decisive threat of cutting offensive weapons could be enough. Sadly, Biden is totally committed to the arming of Israel, just as much as Netanyahu is committed to destroying Gaza. Harris, as his vice president, cannot override this position in public before the elections. But this must be the demand of the Left: Stop tough-talking Netanyahu. Use the real power in your hands.

Nimrod Flaschenberg 

Nimrod Flaschenberg is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Israel and a former parliamentary adviser for the Hadash front. This article was first published by Jacobin.