For most of his long career, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been beholden to the religious and ultra-nationalist parties that have kept him in power. When a coalition is narrowly Right or Left – barely exceeding 60 seats – the extremists, if truly willing to bring it down, wield enormous power. This has been on full display in the current term.
It’s widely assumed that to appease hardliners Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu wants to prolong the war and even restart it now – and Hamas provides endless excuses. However, I’m not sure that’s true. The coalition is living on borrowed time. With elections looming, prolonging the war is no longer the path to victory. The public is weary, and pleasing voters is becoming more important than pleasing coalition fanatics.
Netanyahu suffers from a severe case of Louis XIV syndrome, truly believing that “I am the state.” He thinks he must rule, decide, and direct, so he’ll certainly run again. Polls since the October 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas have consistently been grim. To many people’s surprise, he survived. But he has not erased from the public’s mind the memory of that disastrous failure, nor the judicial “reform” conflict he ignited while hiding behind Justice Minister Yariv Levin.
If I were advising Netanyahu on how to escape his deadlock and maximize his reelection chances, the direction would be clear: cut to the Center (or, in other words, to the Left).
This doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning the bloc built by Menachem Begin in the 1977 election, when for the first time the historic Labor movement was ousted from power. Since then, Israeli elections have been determined by one simple equation: a majority of 61 seats confers power, pitting the Likud-Right-religious-haredi alliance against everyone else.
That remains true even if a unity government is later formed, because the person heading it is decided by that formula. Netanyahu perfected this through a cult of personality spanning the bloc, but the system remains the same.
THE BAD NEWS for the general public is that Netanyahu’s bloc now poses an existential threat to Israel’s future if it stays in power. The good news is that while blocs still determine results, they no longer reflect the ideological map of Israeli society.
Beneath the deafening noise of political propaganda on all sides, a surprising centrist consensus emerges, even among some Likud voters who forgive Netanyahu for his troubling partners.
Most Israelis want a Jewish and democratic state. They know that permanent rule over millions of Palestinians makes that impossible (a “leftist” position), yet they also fear that a hasty withdrawal from the West Bank would bring massive security risks. The sane majority understands the complexity and could probably agree on a way forward – at minimum, to immediately stop settlement expansion beyond the security fence, and later take further steps.
Most Israelis, including many who have backed Netanyahu, also believe the status quo with the ultra-Orthodox cannot continue. They will soon be one-fifth of the population, growing at world-record rates. Their brazen insistence on avoiding military service is the burning core of this malignant divide. But there’s more: stipends for full-time yeshiva students instead of paying tuition like everyone else, a suicidal refusal to provide their youth with a core education, endless direct and masked subsidies, and so on.
This is where most Israelis live ideologically. However, the system, and Netanyahu’s obsession with staying in power at all costs, reward the extremes. If these two issues are not resolved, Israel has no future. In despair, masses will emigrate, yielding an economic and demographic catastrophe.
Netanyahu is not unintelligent or ignorant, so he surely understands all this. I’m not sure he’s a patriot (in fact, I doubt it), but I’m dead certain that he wants to stay in power.
How would a leftward turn that wins back centrist voters look?
• First, act decisively to end the war despite Hamas’s tricks. Massive pressure is needed on the mediators, especially Qatar. To incentivize them, Israel must present a different posture. That’s the only way to overcome the problems already seen in implementing the “20 Points Plan.”
• Second, propose renewing positive ties with the Palestinian Authority, conditional on reforms as required by Trump’s plan. The world would breathe a sigh of relief if Israel abandoned the self-deception that the PA is as bad as Hamas. Add a clear declaration that Israel is committed to Palestinian prosperity – echoing envoy Jared Kushner’s recent comments on 60 Minutes.
• Third, clarify that once Hamas is no longer in control of Gaza and disarmed, Israel will be ready to discuss the “Palestinian state pathway” clause of the 20 Points Plan. This would create huge incentives for Hamas to capitulate and earn Israel immense goodwill. Israel can maintain that any future Palestinian state be fully demilitarized, under strict international border monitoring, and not encompass the entire West Bank.
• Fourth, make clear that in return, Israel expects normalization with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, and should aim for security arrangements with Syria and Lebanon (these could be justified as outcomes of the war, since Hezbollah has been weakened and Assad’s regime has fallen).
Lebanon, with global support, must finally grant citizenship to its generations of Palestinian residents, and in return, receive crucial Gulf aid.
THIS WILL SOUND delusional to many, even those who understand that such a repositioning would bring Israel immense benefit. They simply believe that Netanyahu won’t risk his coalition – because, at heart, he isn’t a patriot. It is sad that so many are sanguine about such an assessment.
Such moves might indeed bring down his government a bit sooner – but it would also earn him protection from the opposition and bring many voters back to the Likud. So it’s politically smart.
If Netanyahu follows my advice and then wins the next election – meaning, again, that he gets a majority together with the fanatics, because that’s always the formula – he must then betray his bloc and invite the Center-Left into a broad coalition with Likud alone.
He should make refusal impossible by proposing these revolutionary measures. He won’t be boycotted; everyone in the opposition knows that another term like the current one would bring Zionism to the brink.
If he loses, at least he’ll be remembered for steering Likud, and perhaps the nation, toward pragmatic normalcy. Future right-wing leaders could cooperate with the Center instead of the extremists. Israel would benefit, and it would count in his favor.
If Netanyahu stays the errand boy of Smotrich, he’ll likely lose. Then the next government should consider inviting Likud as a junior partner, with or without him. A broad, reality-based coalition could act in the spirit of everything written above, serving the real Israeli majority that wants security without fanaticism, identity without coercion, a rational integration of the ultra-Orthodox, and peace without illusions. The current system no longer serves them.
In this distortion, Israel resembles other democracies, including the US. In many societies, a broad center could reach agreements and solve problems – but social media algorithms amplify extremism, inflating the fringes: neo-fascists on one side, radical progressives on the other, dragging society to the edges.
Netanyahu maneuvered brilliantly within Israel’s version of this phenomenon, becoming the country’s longest-serving prime minister. His obsession with yet more power is as absurd as Russia’s war in Ukraine – the world’s largest country fighting desperately for one more patch of land.
Netanyahu does not truly need more time. He needs a legacy not defined by his past as a cynical and divisive politician who stood trial on corruption charges. If he heeds my advice, he might be remembered as the leader who, after a war born of failure and yielding mixed results, rose above himself to serve his nation.
I harbor few illusions. But the logic is as clear as daylight – and sometimes, logic wins.
The writer is a former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe-Africa editor of the Associated Press, a former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem and an author of two books about Israel. He publishes Ask Questions Later on Substack.