Binyamin Netanyahu will lead the Likud party in the general elections for the 12th time this year. He is already Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister, having spent a total of more than 18 years in office. If he wins, he could become the longest-serving leader of any democracy since World War II.
The election date has not been decided yet, but in a conversation with The Economist Filmed interview for “The Insider” On January 8, the Israeli Prime Minister was in full campaign mode in Jerusalem. One focus is his quest for a second term. He says, “As long as I believe that I can secure the future of Israel, to which I have dedicated my life, both as a soldier and as a politician, I will do so.” Yet his coalition of nationalist and religious parties lags far behind a majority in most polls.
Mr Netanyahu is also committed to restoring his country’s international reputation. Israel has emerged from the two-year war in Gaza with a deeply tarnished global image: not only among its habitual critics, but also among many of its former supporters in the West, traumatized by the destruction of much of Gaza and the deaths of more than 70,000 Palestinians.
Watch: Conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu
“I would like to do everything possible to fight the propaganda war that has been waged against us,” he says. “Basically, we are using the cavalry against the F-35, because they have flooded social networks with fake bots and many other things.” He says an initial step could be for Israel to give up the subsidies it receives from the United States that it uses to buy American weapons.
Mr Netanyahu built his political career on his bombastic speeches and interviews with international media, reminiscent of his days as ambassador to the United Nations in the 1980s. This reflects his belief that the way for Israel to influence governments is to win the battle of public opinion. This is a battle Israel is losing.
The Prime Minister complains that Israel has been the subject of unfair scrutiny. He says, “I suspect that if people saw what happened there, Churchill might have escalated World War II.” “You are holding this democracy, this democracy in crisis, to an impossible standard.”
He is also accused of prejudice against Jews. “In the Middle Ages we were poisoning wells, we were spreading vermin, we were killing Christian children using their blood for the Passover festival… The humiliations inflicted on the Jewish people are now being delivered to the Jewish state.”
He hopes that the ceasefire in Gaza will help. He says, “The minute the intense fighting stops, the international media attention and the terrible reporting, often completely false reporting that happens there – the ease with which propaganda captures the facts, or fact checks – it goes away.”
Mr Netanyahu will also try to overcome potential differences between Israel and its main ally, the United States. In the interview the Prime Minister revealed that he is not seeking a full renewal of the ten-year US military aid package, which currently stands at $3.8 billion annually and requires renegotiation in 2028. Publicly for the first time, he talked about reducing US aid to zero in ten years. He stressed that he would “continue to fight for the integrity of the American people”. However, President Donald Trump dislikes handing over money, and parts of his MAGA movement have become increasingly critical of Israel.
At last, Mr. Netanyahu believes he can convince Western voters that they misunderstand the nature of the conflict being waged by Israel. “Today there is a great battle between the forces of civilization, the forces of modernity,” he says. “Very radical forces … want to take us back to the early Middle Ages and want to do it with a violence that is unimaginable. You’ve seen these pictures of people cutting the enemy’s chest, these Islamists, tearing out the heart. The guy is still alive and eating the heart.” He argues that the reality is that “Israel is defending itself, but in doing so we are defending Western civilization.”
These are strong claims, but Mr. Netanyahu has been using the same arguments for decades, which may make them less effective. Furthermore, although they contain some truth, they are less powerful when pitted against the horrors endured by Palestinians inside Gaza.
To further complicate the Prime Minister’s task, his message abroad will sometimes also intersect with the domestic election campaign. For example, settlement expansion in the West Bank has increased rapidly during his tenure, as has settlement violence. Members of his government are demanding merger.
Yet, when asked whether this was an area of disagreement with Mr Trump and Israel’s potential Arab partners, Mr Netanyahu dodged the bullet. He says Mr. Trump has been willing to consider a merger in the past. And, as far as Arab leaders are concerned, he predicts an expansion of the Abraham Accords. He says, “In private conversations, you want the truth? I mean beyond the usual stuff? A lot of them don’t care about that.” “They don’t care about the Palestinian issue. They care about its impact on the street.”
In the election Mr Netanyahu will also face questions about the economy and the role of Israel’s growing ultra-Orthodox community. The economy has recovered remarkably well from the war, due to continued foreign investment in the Israeli technological sector and strong demand for Israeli weapons systems, especially for the rapid rearmament of Europe.
Israel’s technological edge depends on a small, talented and mobile portion of its 10 million population, primarily from the secular and centrist segments of Israeli society, who are opposed to the current government. Mr Netanyahu dismisses reports of an early brain drain as “ridiculous”. But others, including Naftali Bennett, his main rival in the election, have warned that the threat is real and dangerous.
By contrast, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties are political allies of Mr Netanyahu. Their voters receive enormous social benefits, even if many of them refuse to be drafted into military service in times of war. Many ultra-Orthodox men do not work.
Asked about his role, he argues that ultra-Orthodox women work and says he would pass a law encouraging men to serve in the military. He wants to “enable the recruitment of this community,” he says, but also want to enable a select few to study Torah. This is unlikely to please anyone – too much for the ultra-Orthodox and too little for everyone else.
How much time the prime minister will have to devote to his two campaigns, re-election and restoring Israel’s international reputation, will be partly determined by events in Iran, where mass protests are threatening to engulf the Islamic regime. For years Mr Netanyahu has called for international action against Iran. During the 12-day war waged by Israel and the US on Iran last June, he tried to force regime change. In a meeting with Mr. Trump just last week, he secured a public commitment from the president that he would engage in more attacks on Israel if Iran moves to rebuild its nuclear program and continues building ballistic missiles.
However, speaking to The Economist, Mr Netanyahu remained surprisingly silent about both Iran and Mr Trump. “This could be a moment when the people of Iran take responsibility for their own destiny,” he said. “Revolution is best accomplished from within.” He neither endorsed nor rejected Mr Trump’s threat to take action against the regime if it continued shooting protesters.
His sudden restraint may have been a response to warnings from Israeli intelligence officials in recent days that Iran might “miscalculate” and attack Israel in an attempt to stoke the anger of its own people. “I will tell you a definite time when we will resume our military activities,” he says. “If Iran attacks us, as they might, there will be terrible consequences for Iran. That’s for sure. Everything else, I think we should look at what’s happening inside Iran.”
A devastating attack by Hamas in October 2023 hangs over both missions. International sympathy for Israel depended on people’s understanding that this was the greatest blow in the country’s history. Domestically, the election is likely to be a referendum on whether voters hold Mr Netanyahu responsible for what happened to them.
Asked how Israel was caught unawares, Mr Netanyahu said he was ready to answer questions from an investigation he had not yet established. However, he avoids using the word “responsibility” and is quick to place blame on the intelligence services and the rest of his cabinet. The failure of 7 October was truly collective. However, it would be difficult for a man who has run a country for so long to take credit for all its successes and avoid blame for its disasters.
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