Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks thinner and paler these days, but remains tireless, campaigning across Israel ahead of Tuesday’s elections. At 77, he is already Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. If he extends his tenure, he must sell a weary, polarized electorate on a new, more hawkish version of himself and of Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu’s career is defined by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. His reputation as risk-averse and Israel’s “Mr. Security” was badly damaged. So he reinvented himself, abandoning short defensive wars for Israel’s longest war on multiple fronts — against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iran with the United States.
“He understood that if he wanted to survive, not only politically but as a historic figure, he had to change,” said Mazal Mualem, an Israeli political commentator and Netanyahu biographer. “He killed off the old Bibi and delivered a new one into the world.”
Mr. Netanyahu promised total victory over Hamas and other enemies. While Israel’s military campaign has battered adversaries, the wars have been inconclusive. Now he says more must be done, and that he is the one to do it. Days before what many Israelis view as the most fateful election in the country’s history, Mr. Netanyahu and his Likud party are in a tight race against an opposition led by Gadi Eisenkot, a centrist and former military chief. Opinion polls show the opposition slightly ahead but lacking enough seats to guarantee a governing coalition.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing