How Netanyahu could beat the odds and stay in power

There has been much speculation that the military and intelligence failure on Oct. 7 (which became known in Israel as the "Black Shabbat" because it produced the highest number of Jewish casualties since 1945) means that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's days in office are numbered.

But Netanyahu is signaling that he will not step down without a fight. He is preparing the ground for blaming military officials for the failure and continuing to promote the overhaul of the judiciary, which was at the center of the political debate in Israel in the months before Hamas’s attack.

For anyone who has followed Netanyahu's career, this is not a surprise. After Netanyahu lost his first reelection campaign in 1999, he resigned as chairman of the Likud party. He anticipated that he could return to lead the movement relatively effortlessly because of his popularity.

But to his surprise, his successor – Ariel Sharon – became popular in the party and among Israelis. It took Netanyahu more than six years to regain his position as the Likud chairman and 10 years to become prime minister again. According to several Netanyahu biographies, one of the main lessons Netanyahu learned from his difficulty in returning to power was not to let go of his chair.

However, Netanyahu has not suffered such low approval ratings in polls since returning to office in 2009. Netanyahu marketed himself for years as the "protector of Israel." Several months before the attack, senior military officials, including the minister of defense from Netanyahu's party, warned that his pursuit of judicial reform was harming Israel's national security. Netanyahu ignored those concerns.

Several polls show that a Likud led by Netanyahu would lose 13 seats, mainly to the centrist party led by Benny Gantz, the former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff. Netanyahu's core coalition (without Gantz's party, which joined the government temporarily for the duration of the war) is polling in the low 40s — far from the 61 seats needed to establish a coalition.

Another poll found that 44 percent of Israelis blame Netanyahu for the military failure. Forty-seven percent believe he should resign after the war, and 29 percent believe he should resign immediately. So 78 percent of the public believes the Netanyahu era should end.

Nonetheless, Netanyahu proved his ability to rise back from the political ashes several times. In November 2022, he regained the prime ministership after being ousted by the "change coalition" led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. He has a devoted political base, uncommon rhetorical abilities and a legal necessity to stay in power to avoid criminal charges. Even now, when his public support is at an all-time low, politicians from the Likud brief against him only anonymously. 

Netanyahu's actions demonstrate that he would not go down without a fight. For example, Netanyahu is reportedly working on establishing a governmental inquiry committee to examine the state failure on Oct. 7 rather than an independent state commission of inquiry.

After many past governmental failures, the Knesset voted to establish a state commission of inquiry as a method to gain public trust. Such was the case after the military failure in anticipating the 1973 War. However, Netanyahu never established independent state commissions of inquiry during his term as prime minister. Instead, he used a mechanism of governmental inquiry committees in which – unlike the independent state commissions – the government chooses the person to lead the committee.

The committee also does not have other trial-like authorities held by independent commissions, such as subpoena powers. By planning to establish a governmental inquiry committee for the events of Oct. 7, Netanyahu wishes to avoid public accountability for his responsibility for the failure.

In addition, Netanyahu's plan to overhaul the judiciary has not been taken off the table. The minister of justice, Yariv Levin, refused to hold a meeting of the Judicial Nomination Committee, even though there are two vacancies on the Supreme Court and no permanent chief justice for the first time in the country's history. The Judicial Nomination Committee composition is a central component of the judicial overhaul plan the government promoted. The main goal is to increase the government's ability to nominate justices, which today is limited by the majority held by representatives of the National Bar Association and the justices. 

Netanyahu seems to have a two-fold plan to stay in power. First, by postponing any question of responsibility until after the war, he allows himself more time in office and to recover politically. Top officials in Israel, including Netanyahu and Gantz, already commented that the war could last months and even years. As long as the objective is still eliminating Hamas's rule in Gaza, what is considered to be wartime could also include the time it takes to transfer the power in Gaza to another entity.

So, the meaning of the "day after the war" is highly ambiguous. By that time, whenever it may be, the public sentiment against Netanyahu could change drastically. The people currently supporting Netanyahu stepping down after the war – 47 percent of the public – might change their minds. 

Furthermore, Netanyahu is building a case to blame other public officials for the failure of Oct. 7. There are numerous reports about how his close aides are working on collecting documents to support such a case, pointing to failures of the military and the Shin-Bet in preventing the Hamas attack. In late October, Netanyahu tweeted at 1 a.m. that he had never received warnings from the intelligence community about such an attack by Hamas. After a public backlash, he deleted the tweet in the morning.

It is uncertain whether Netanyahu could rise from the political ashes again. But it is wishful thinking to assume we have reached the end of the Netanyahu era. In case of a successful military operation, changing public sentiment in the months ahead and the right political campaign — Netanyahu could beat the odds and stay in power.

Eyal Lurie-Pardes is a visiting rellow in the Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute after being awarded with the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School LLM Post-Graduate Fellowship. Prior to joining MEI, Eyal worked with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Zulat Institute for Equality and Human Rights, and as a parliamentary advisor in the Knesset.