Israel has seen huge weekly protests since the start of the year against the government’s reform plans. As months passed, the scale of the protests intensified in towns and cities. The government (with a comfortable majority in parliament) passed into law in July the first planned change – the so-called “reasonableness” bill. This removed the power of the Supreme Court (and lower courts) to cancel government decisions deemed “extremely unreasonable.” Protesters called for all the planned reforms to be scrapped and for Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, to resign. Netanyahu’s political rivals, as well as former top officials in Israel’s military, and intelligence services, former chief justices and prominent legal figures joined in criticizing the government.
Officers of Israel’s feared external intelligence service, Mossad (motto: By way of Deception Thou shalt Do War), and internal secret agency, Shin Bet (motto: Defender That Shall Not Be Seen) have earned their epaulets through some complicated situations. Netanyahu believed them to the point of being absolutely spotless. October 7, 2023, proved otherwise as hordes of Hamas overran Israeli check posts, hoodwinking the hi-tech fenced walls and closely guarded entrances through land, air and sea. Bibi (73) had little choice and declared war that now threatens to expand with Syria, Lebanon and Iran joining in against Tel Aviv in the war on Palestine.
However, despite the rhetoric, Netanyahu’s popularity has taken a beating. Israel’s public diplomacy minister Galit Distel Atbaryan has stepped down from her post citing the stripping of her ministry’s already limited powers. Atbaryan’s decision comes after Netanyahu’s government empowered the Diaspora Affairs Ministry to oversee Israel’s international public diplomacy efforts alongside the Foreign Ministry earlier this week.
Meanwhile, a poll conducted by Israeli research institutes indicates that Netanyahu’s popularity has dropped since Hamas’s devastating attack last weekend, while that of Benny Gantz, a former general who’s now part of Israel’s “war cabinet,” has surged. The survey showed opposition parties would win a crushing majority against Netanyahu’s coalition if elections were held now. Of the roughly 600 people surveyed, 48% said Gantz was their preferred prime minister, while 29% chose Netanyahu.
Netanyahu, the longest-serving Israeli Prime Minister, has repeatedly formulated his policies around the idea that Israel can resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict without engaging with the Palestinians.
However, the present conflict and the opposition it is receiving shows something else. There have been pro-Palestine protests across the world. An Israeli diplomat was stabbed in Beijing raising security concerns for Israelis living across the world.
Netanyahu, elected for his 6th term on December 29, 2022, is known to be the most far-right and religious leader in Israel. He is also on trial for corruption.
Netanyahu was born in Jaffa in 1949. His mother, Tzila Segal, was an Israeli-born Jew and his father Benzion Netanyahu was from Poland. PM Netanyahu was raised in Jerusalem and went to the US for high school.
On May 13, 1969, Sgt. Benjamin Netanyahu made his way through the marshlands of northwestern Sinai. He was seated in an armoured half-track. Night had just fallen and the future prime minister would soon be in a battle for his life in the warm, tidal waters of the Suez Canal.
Speaking before a joint session of Congress in 2011, Netanyahu made a terse mention of that evening. “I remember what it was like before we had peace,” he told the ardently hospitable crowd. “I was nearly killed in a firefight inside the Suez Canal. I mean that literally.”
Netanyahu soon became an elite commando who served as captain during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. In 1982, Netanyahu was appointed deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in Washington. In 1984, he was appointed Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.
His political career began when he was appointed as deputy foreign minister in 1988 in the cabinet of the then PM Yitzhak Shamir. He became the chairman of the Likud party in 1993, which he lost to Ariel Sharon and regained in 2005. He served as the PM of Israel from 1996 to 1999 and had a record 12-year tenure from 2009 to 2021.
This month marks his sixth term as prime minister. It may also mark the most critical period for Israel since its independence in 1948 as its allies count the advantages and disadvantages of a protracted war and its foes take time to close ranks.