Foreign Affairs

by Dalia Dassa Kaye

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dominated his country’s politics for the last four decades, and his influence will not end even if Israelis vote him out of office. Over the course of his tenure as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu has dramatically reset the terms of the country’s national security politics. His persistent rejection of Palestinian statehood has helped push the idea firmly out of mainstream debates, and his longtime agitation for war against Iran is now widely accepted policy across Israel’s political and security establishment.

    Before his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu was already a divisive figure. In 1993, as the leader of the opposition, he likened Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Oslo agreement with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler ahead of World War II. His inflammatory rhetoric emboldened Israelis who considered any territorial compromise with the Palestinians to be treasonous, including the assassin who killed Rabin in 1995. Today, extreme policies and positions have become normalized under Netanyahu’s watch. He has presided over a three-year campaign of mass destruction and displacement in Gaza and the killing of more than 70,000 Palestinians. His government includes one politician, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was barred from serving in the army in his youth because of his involvement in terrorist groups, and another, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has said Israel needs “to wipe out Gaza” and that it should repeat what it “did in Gaza” in the West Bank. Defense Minister Israel Katz has made similar calls for applying the “Gaza model” to the West Bank and even southern Lebanon.

    Netanyahu might soon lose power. His attacks on Israel’s judiciary, corruption trials, and refusal to take responsibility for security lapses ahead of Hamas’s terror attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, have generated significant opposition among Israelis. A change of leadership could have profound consequences for domestic policy. But whether Netanyahu leaves politics this week or years down the road, his national security vision will outlast him. He has had catastrophic success in crushing domestic support for Palestinian national aspirations and gaining mainstream backing for a permanent war footing to confront Iran. Netanyahu has changed the baseline of how Israelis think about their country’s security and turned his own uncompromising positions into an institutionalized reality. Future leaders may bring their own styles to Israeli security policy, but for the foreseeable future, at least, they will be coloring within lines that Netanyahu has drawn for them.

• TWO-STATE ILLUSION

    Netanyahu is not the first Israeli prime minister to reject Palestinian national aspirations. In a 1969 interview, Golda Meir famously asserted that there was “no such thing” as a distinct Palestinian nation. Menachem Begin embraced the 1978 Camp David accords with Egypt only because the agreement did not require him to come to terms with the Palestinians. Yitzhak Shamir refused to allow independent Palestinian representation at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference.

    The difference today is that the idea of Palestinian statehood is not even up for debate. This change did not happen overnight. Rabin’s assassination led to the dismantling of the Oslo model, which intended to produce a Palestinian state but in practice produced limited Palestinian self-government and continued Israeli control over much of the West Bank. Attacks by Palestinian terrorist groups throughout the 1990s deepened Israelis’ skepticism about the prospects of peace, which helped to bring Netanyahu to power in 1996.

    Still, when Netanyahu’s first term ended in 1999, some politicians sought to keep the possibility of a political settlement alive. Israelis elected leaders such as Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert who were open to territorial concessions to the Palestinians and who engaged in serious, albeit unsuccessful, U.S.-backed peace negotiations. Barak also spearheaded a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000. Even the hawkish Ariel Sharon, whose controversial visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem later that year helped spark the second Palestinian intifada, evacuated around 9,000 Israeli settlers and initiated the withdrawal of ground forces from Gaza in 2005.

    But in the absence of a negotiated solution, the conflict worsened on all fronts. Hamas won the 2006 elections in Gaza and took full control of the territory by 2007. Military conflict between Israel and Hamas became routine, with major wars erupting in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021. Netanyahu became prime minister again after the first of those wars, in 2009. As Israel contended with frequent rocket fire from Gaza and missile attacks by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah in the north, Netanyahu linked the deteriorating security conditions to Israel’s earlier withdrawals from these areas, bolstering his case against territorial compromise.

    Extreme policies have become normalized under Netanyahu’s watch.

    Netanyahu’s policies also changed realities on the ground in the West Bank. Even before his return to power, after the second intifada broke out, Israel built a concrete wall to separate Israel from the West Bank that encroached substantially on internationally acknowledged Palestinian territory. Israeli checkpoints throughout the West Bank also severely limited Palestinians’ freedom of movement and access to East Jerusalem. In office, Netanyahu accelerated policies, including continued settlement expansion, that threatened the viability of a future Palestinian state. And he encouraged a growing divide between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank by facilitating Qatari payments to Hamas-run Gaza for more than a decade, further undermining the Palestinian national project.

    Even the coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid that briefly removed Netanyahu from power from 2021 to 2022, and which promised change, did not substantially depart from Netanyahu’s positions. It is telling that this coalition—the only one able to push Netanyahu aside in the last decade and a half—boasted strong right-wing security credentials; Bennett was a longtime opponent of Palestinian statehood. Rather than taking steps to advance peace with the Palestinians, Bennett and Lapid focused on the Abraham Accords, the agreements negotiated by the first Trump administration in which several Arab states committed to normalizing relations with Israel without requiring concrete progress toward Palestinian statehood in return.

    Few vocal supporters of Palestinian statehood remained within the political establishment on the eve of October 7, 2023. The attacks that day all but ensured that opposition to a Palestinian state would become the norm. No Israeli political leader, even in the opposition, speaks anymore about ending Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. After destroying much of Gaza and killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, Israel has regained military control of nearly 70 percent of the strip. Israeli settlers in the West Bank, whose numbers have more than doubled since the Oslo accords were signed, have been attacking Palestinians with alarming frequency. The settlers have ravaged Palestinian villages as the Israeli government and military look the other way, if not outright condone the violence. Palestinians, as a result, are now more focused on survival than statehood. Whether Netanyahu wins or loses this election, there is no clear path to the two-state future he has been so determined to avoid.

• CALL TO ARMS

    Netanyahu’s hardline position on Iran has been just as consistent as his hardline attitude toward the Palestinians. As early as 1992, as a member of the Knesset, he warned that Iran was “racing to develop nuclear weapons” and that the “threat must be uprooted.” More than three decades later, Netanyahu finally found in Donald Trump a U.S. president willing to launch the military campaign against Iran he had long sought. The first attack went forward in June 2025, when the United States and Israel struck key nuclear sites in Iran. Then, on February 28, they began a larger war targeting the Iranian leadership itself. As Netanyahu announced in a video message at the start of hostilities, “Together with the U.S., we will strike the terror regime hard and create the conditions that will enable the brave Iranian people to cast off the yoke of this murderous regime.”

    The Israeli public and Israeli politicians expressed near-uniform support for the war in its early months; Lapid, the leader of the opposition, declared it a “just war.” By June, polls showed more public criticism of Netanyahu’s handling of the war. But few Israeli politicians have questioned the need to maintain military pressure on Iran, and active planning for renewed attacks continues. When Yair Golan, the leader of the left-wing Democrats party, called Israel’s killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameini a “mistake” that led to an even more extremist Iranian leadership, politicians across the political spectrum condemned him.

    There used to be more debate among Israel’s military, intelligence, and political elite about how to deal with Iran. When Netanyahu’s government began seriously considering a conventional military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2012, for instance—a development that drew concern in Washington—Israeli leaders did not all immediately coalesce around the idea of attacking Iran. Notable voices such as Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, were arguing against a military strike and questioning what such a move could accomplish. The debate over military options became moot, however, once the Obama administration announced an interim nuclear deal with Tehran, negotiated in 2013 via back-channel diplomacy through Oman. The deal surprised and infuriated Netanyahu, who tried without success to scuttle the final nuclear agreement, which was signed in 2015.

    Today, the idea of Palestinian statehood is not even up for debate.

    Netanyahu’s strident opposition to U.S. President Barack Obama’s diplomacy was not supported by all Israeli politicians, either. Many worried that campaigning against the nuclear deal would damage Israel’s relations with Washington and that Netanyahu’s growing alignment with the U.S. Republican Party threatened bipartisan support for Israel. Although the Israeli government officially opposed the agreement, several prominent political leaders and members of the security establishment argued that the deal could have upsides. Benny Gantz, the former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, called the deal an “achievement” that could postpone Iranian nuclear capabilities for ten to 15 years. Some Israeli officials even argued against a U.S. withdrawal from the deal when Trump, with Netanyahu’s enthusiastic support, threatened to do so without first establishing an alternative arrangement. Even Barak, who had supported military strikes on Iran in the past and criticized the nuclear deal when it was signed, questioned whether Trump’s pulling out of the agreement was the “optimal” way to deal with Iran.

    But these debates largely dissipated after Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018. When Iran resumed its nuclear enrichment program and with diplomatic efforts at a dead end, Netanyahu seized the opportunity to renew Israel’s shadow war with Tehran. Explosions at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility in July 2020 and April 2021 were widely attributed to Israeli intelligence, as was the killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist in November 2020, after the election of U.S. President Joe Biden, who had promised to restore the nuclear deal during his campaign. Even when the Bennett-Lapid coalition took over, Israeli positions on Iran remained consistent. The new government was less confrontational than Netanyahu’s, but it opposed a U.S. return to the nuclear deal. Bennett argued, as Netanyahu had done before, that an agreement would channel funds into “the Iranian terror machine.”

    After October 7, with Netanyahu back in power, Israel escalated its attacks on Iran and its proxies. These actions included strikes in Tehran and Beirut that killed the heads of Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as tit-for-tat missile exchanges with Iran in April and October 2024. Aside from criticism that Netanyahu was timing the attacks to serve his own political interests, opposition figures such as Lapid and Gantz supported Netanyahu’s actions and the public backed what had become open military confrontation between Israel and Iran.

    Israeli leaders have rallied behind Netanyahu’s preference for military confrontation over diplomacy, and not only with Iran. The idea that preventive military action should be used to manage any potential threat has guided Israel’s campaigns not only in Palestinian territories but also in southern Lebanon and in Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. Israel has been crossing new lines: it launched its first military attack on a Gulf Arab state in September 2025 with an airstrike in Doha targeting Hamas leaders. War has become Israel’s normal state of affairs.

• MORE OF THE SAME

    Even if Netanyahu loses power, Israel’s approach to national security is unlikely to change. The opposition has articulated clear differences from the current government on matters of domestic policy, but major fissures on the Palestinian conflict, Iran, and Israel’s wider regional military campaigns are less apparent. As many Israeli analysts have put it, the political spectrum of the opposition is in essence “50 shades of right.”

    Gadi Eisenkot, who has emerged as Netanyahu’s main rival, might slow settlement expansion in the West Bank and crack down on settler violence if he becomes prime minister. But those steps would amount to tactical adjustments, not strategic shifts. Eisenkot is not suggesting that Israel end its occupation of the West Bank or make a serious effort to advance a two-state solution. He has called the idea of a Palestinian state “delusional” in the wake of October 7. Other leading opposition figures, such as Bennett, not only oppose a Palestinian state but also avidly support settlement expansion.

    A new government would not overhaul Israel’s policy in Gaza, either. There is widespread resentment among opposition politicians and the Israeli public over how Netanyahu waged the war, especially his resistance to cease-fire agreements that could have saved the lives of more hostages. Many believe Netanyahu prolonged the war to stay in power. But there is far less concern about the war’s effect on Palestinians; only a small number of Israeli human rights groups say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. An Eisenkot government might be more inclined to advance the stalled Trump peace plan for Gaza, which has yet to make meaningful progress on reconstruction, Palestinian governance, or other key objectives. But like Netanyahu, Eisenkot does not support giving up Israeli control of Gaza without the full disarmament of Hamas.

    More fundamentally, Israeli leaders across the board now consider control of territory to be essential to national security—whether in Gaza, the West Bank, southern Lebanon, or Syria. As the Middle East scholar Nathan Brown has observed, to the extent that debate about Israel’s security doctrine remains, it “is increasingly about how Israeli predominance should be exercised, not whether it should be maintained.” A new government might be willing, with Washington’s backing, to strike a nonaggression agreement with Syria that would require the removal of Israeli forces from border areas. Many leading Israeli politicians oppose such a withdrawal, however, lowering the odds of a deal going through. And it is even less likely that Israel would cede ground anywhere else.

    No major Israeli politician is arguing for a change of course on Iran. The only significant domestic criticism of Netanyahu’s Iran policy has been about his failure to prevent diplomatic agreements, such as the short-lived memorandum of understanding the Trump administration reached with Tehran in June, which most Israelis see as favoring Iran and as failing to remove Tehran’s nuclear and missile threat. Israeli military leaders are already planning for the next round of war, including for a possible scenario in which Israel has to fight Iran on its own. Maintaining this war footing seems to have broad political support, too. Lapid has argued that Israel should go even further in its attacks on Iran, including by bombing “all energy facilities” to make sure the “Iranian economy is demolished.”

• WAITING FOR A CHANGE

    Netanyahu would have found it far more difficult to bring his hardline vision into the mainstream had he faced a political opponent who could powerfully advocate for a fundamentally different vision for Israel’s place in the region and path to peace. There have been no Rabins in the Israeli opposition, no leaders willing to pivot from their own previous positions, tell the public the truth about what a real peace would require, and invest in the painstaking work of diplomacy. Instead, Netanyahu’s governing style has stifled robust debate on national security questions and lined up Israel’s defense leadership behind the prime minister’s own uncompromising worldview that favors continuous reliance on military force.

    Neither did Netanyahu face serious pushback from Washington as he pursued policies that thwarted any hope for peace with the Palestinians, including the relentless destruction of Gaza. Even though U.S. public attitudes toward Israel have grown increasingly unfavorable, on both sides of the political divide, American presidents have become less willing to use diplomatic and economic leverage to cajole Israeli leaders to end dangerous activities such as settlement expansion. The lack of pressure from the United States—and some Arab states’ willingness to normalize relations with Israel without demanding serious progress toward reconciliation with the Palestinians—made it easier for Netanyahu to pursue hardline policies without making concessions. It weakened dissenting voices within Israel, too, who could not convincingly criticize those policies on the grounds that they would damage Israel’s security or relationships with its most important partners.

    War has become Israel’s normal state of affairs.

    Of course, regional realities complicate Netanyahu’s worldview. The plight of the Palestinians continues to resonate with foreign publics, limiting how far pivotal countries such as Saudi Arabia will go in normalizing relations with Israel. Yet future Israeli leaders may not be overly concerned about that problem, convinced that Israel, with its military might and technological edge, has too much to offer potential partners to be ignored or isolated. Many Israeli politicians today are dismissive of the increasingly common view in the region that Israel is as great a security threat as Iran.

    A serious reversal of Netanyahu’s security policies will not be possible until a new Israeli leader emerges with a bold alternative plan for how Israel achieves lasting peace—and with the ability to bring the Israeli public on board. And as long as the United States remains Israel’s closest political and security partner, helping this shift along will require U.S. policies that stop enabling and start pushing back on Israeli settlement expansion, territorial occupation, and reckless military escalation.

    None of this is happening during the current Israeli election season. In fact, there is little chance of it happening any time soon. Netanyahu has triumphed in squashing Israeli support for Palestinian national aspirations and normalizing military confrontation with Iran. It’s a powerful legacy. But it is not one that will make Israel, the region, or the world better off.