Netanyahu and Israel's Election: His Political Legacy Is the Opposition

In September, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up to the podium at the United Nations General Assembly, a wave of delegates rose and walked out of the hall in protest. Unfazed, Netanyahu — who is seeking a new term in this month's election and is wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges in Gaza — smiled and shot back: "If there are any moral cowards left in the hall, please leave now."

For his supporters watching from Israel, that was exactly what they wanted to hear. Mitchell Barak, a former Netanyahu aide, told Al Jazeera: "When they see Netanyahu at the UN, that is what they want — and it is hard for them to imagine anyone else doing it." He added: "For many people in Israel, though not all, he is the only one who can truly lead Israel. He makes them feel proud to be Jewish."

On October 27, Israel will have to choose between Netanyahu and a slate of rivals united only by their absolute opposition to the country's longest-serving prime minister.

In the eyes of both his supporters and his opponents, as well as much of the world, Netanyahu has become the face of modern Israel.

Born in 1949 in Tel Aviv to Benzion Netanyahu and Tzila Segal, he spent his early years between Israel and the United States. The constants of his life were his father's deep pessimism — a right-wing historian who saw the world as fundamentally hostile to Jewish survival — and the military legacy of his brother Yonatan, killed in 1976 while leading the rescue of Israeli hostages taken at Entebbe, Uganda.

Since then, Netanyahu has passed through many roles. In 1982, he was appointed deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. Two years later, he was named Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, before returning to Israel to join Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's cabinet as deputy foreign minister in 1988.

In 1996, Netanyahu became Israel's youngest prime minister, leading the first in a string of governments that he would later head for a record 12 years from 2009 to 2021. He returned to power for a sixth term the following year, leading the most right-wing government in Israel's history.

From the start of his political career, he has faced mounting accusations that he deliberately stokes division for political and personal ends. Political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said: "Netanyahu is the perfect embodiment of Israel's political polarization." Describing Netanyahu as "always" in "campaign mode," he said the Israeli leader "is very good at building coalitions that reflect public opinion, as well as at steering public opinion his way."

Built-in divisions

Under Netanyahu's leadership, Israel continued its rightward shift, abandoning the path toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that his assassinated predecessor Yitzhak Rabin had initiated. At the same time, a majority of Israeli voters grew accustomed to the violent expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and accepted the war in Gaza after the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 — for which many still blame Netanyahu over alleged security failures — as well as the many wars he has directed since.

In July 2018, Netanyahu's coalition passed the Nation-State Law, declaring national self-determination to be "unique to the Jewish people," stripping Arabic of its official-language status, and making the development of Jewish settlements a national value. After the law, settler violence in the occupied West Bank surged, with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recording 1,291 attacks in 2023 and 1,835 in 2025. According to OCHA, at least 1,071 Palestinians, including 233 children, have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7, 2023, amid what a senior UN official called "near-total impunity."

In the immediate term, Netanyahu's current coalition has brought some of Israel's most controversial figures — such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, convicted of incitement to racism and supporting a "terrorist" group, and openly pro-settlement Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — into the center of power.

Outgoing lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman of the left-wing Hadash party said: "Netanyahu did not create racism and fascism in Israel, but he helped it grow. He is smart. He knew exactly what he was doing when he brought people like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir into the government, and he knew the consequences of those appointments."

Barak, Netanyahu's former aide from the 1990s, said: "He thrives in chaos. He only cares about the big picture, where the end justifies the means."

Running through the prime minister's recent military campaigns are his long wars against any form of domestic judicial constraint. Haunted by corruption cases dating to 2019 that could send him to prison if convicted, he has been locked in a confrontation with the very legal apparatus trying to hold him accountable.

In January 2023, he and his right-wing allies sought to overhaul the judiciary, removing most court oversight of government actions. The proposals triggered unprecedented protests, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets against the controversial move. In June 2024, Netanyahu even suggested that the divisions created by his reforms were partly to blame for his heavily criticized response to the October 7 attack.

The 'devil' you know

Yet while opinion polls show Netanyahu's Likud party and its allies level with a broad anti-Netanyahu bloc of parties that are also right-wing and hawkish, support for the prime minister has weakened. Likud won 32 seats in the 2022 election, but the latest polls project gains of around 20 to 22 seats, with former supporters apparently shifting to the opposition or to harder-right parties.

The anti-Netanyahu coalition has yet to nominate an official leader, but former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot is widely seen as the most likely candidate for prime minister.

Barak said: "We need to be clear about this. He is effectively running unopposed. It is Netanyahu against a coalition of rivals."

Touma-Sliman pointed to a double standard after the prominent leader of a party representing Palestinian citizens of Israel was forced to withdraw from the election over remarks about the Gaza war: "Think about that. He helped create a system where Arab lawmaker Sami Abu Shehadeh is barred from running, while he, a war criminal who has led the country through a genocide, is not."

Flaschenberg noted that for supporters, Netanyahu "remains the only possible leader of Israel." But for opponents, "he is the devil. He embodies corruption, he is responsible for everything that led to October 7 and everything after."

Yet the analyst suggested his ultimate legacy may still lie ahead, recalling former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who once regarded the rightward tilt of the opposition as her greatest legacy.

Flaschenberg said: "Netanyahu's legacy lies in the opposition. All the main candidates are right-wing, hawkish and ultimately racist. That is Netanyahu's legacy."