Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career has long been defined by a singular talent: surviving the impossible. As he faces a deepening crisis within his coalition and mounting pressure from the Israeli public, that survival instinct is being pushed to its breaking point.
The Prime Minister is caught in a vice. On one side, his far-right coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, threaten to collapse the government if he agrees to any ceasefire deal that halts the war in Gaza. On the other, the families of hostages and opposition leaders are demanding a deal at any cost—even if it means triggering early elections that could end his career.
Netanyahu’s strategy remains what it has always been: delay. By refusing to commit to a definitive “day after” plan for Gaza, he keeps his right-wing flank satisfied while simultaneously stalling the more moderate elements of his war cabinet. It is a high-stakes gamble that hinges on the assumption that the Israeli public’s desire for security outweighs their frustration with his leadership.
The recent resignation of Benny Gantz from the war cabinet removed the last veneer of national unity. Gantz, a centrist, left because he felt the government lacked a clear exit strategy for the war. Netanyahu dismissed the move as a loss of focus, but the political reality is harsher. The Prime Minister is now fully beholden to the most extreme members of his cabinet to maintain his majority.
This reliance on the far-right has cost him significantly on the international stage. Relations with the Biden administration have reached a new low, with Washington increasingly frustrated by the lack of humanitarian access and the mounting civilian toll. Netanyahu’s insistence on “total victory” has become a diplomatic liability, yet he continues to lean into it as his primary domestic selling point.
Critics argue that his decision-making is no longer driven by national interest, but by the need to avoid a reckoning at the ballot box. If the coalition falls, Netanyahu loses the protection of his office, opening the door for his ongoing corruption trials to move forward unimpeded.
He has navigated dozens of political minefields over the last two decades. He has outlasted rivals, survived criminal indictments, and rebuilt his party from the ashes of electoral defeat. But this time, the stakes are not just his political life; they are the trajectory of the nation itself. As the war drags on and the domestic pressure builds, Netanyahu is running out of room to maneuver.
The question is no longer whether he can survive another week or another month. It is whether the political savvy that defined his career has finally met a reality it cannot spin.
