On the eve of a contest in which his own party looked to be slipping, Benjamin Netanyahu once again reached for the language of fear, warning voters of a future shaped by rivals they were meant to distrust. The moment echoes a long arc in Israeli public life, in which a leader who rose through security crises learned to turn the anxieties of a divided society into the foundation of his power. What has changed is less the tactic than the room around it: a country that once recoiled from such warnings now hears them with a muted shrug, and the question facing him is whether a politician who help
How Netanyahu Reshaped Israeli Politics, and the Challenge His Strategy Now Faces
He now stands out in a polity he himself moved to the right
Mark
Why does the 2015 versus 2026 comparison matter so much?
Mimi
Because the same kind of remark drew an apology then. This year the sharpest criticism came from Arab parties, and others were muted. The piece reads that as a shift in what Israeli politics tolerates.
Luke
Worth noting that's the author's reading. The article doesn't survey opposition statements, so how muted the rest were is asserted, not measured.
Mark
How did security become his central tool?
Mimi
Hamas bombings in 1996 preceded his first win, and Hamas and Hezbollah stayed as lasting threats. He presented himself as the leader best able to handle them.
Luke
And the claim that he uses that for survival is the opposition's accusation, plus the author's analysis. The piece doesn't offer proof of intent.
Mark
What about the courts?
Mimi
He backed judicial independence in 2012, then from 2019 to 2025 turned on a judiciary pursuing his corruption case. The article says wars he launched helped defer his court appearances.
Luke
That deferral claim is stated flatly, but no court record or timeline is given. The reports of him trying to restart conflict with Iran are also only described as reports.
Mark
So what's the challenge ahead?
Mimi
He once stood out in a system still tied to the Left. Now the system has moved right, partly because of him.
Luke
Whether that makes him less distinctive is the author's prediction, hedged with a may. Nothing here says how he fares next.
El Pulso
- Likud faces grim exit polls as Netanyahu sounds a familiar alarm about Arab politicians forming a government.
- A 2015 apology for similar remarks contrasts sharply with a 2026 response dominated by Arab parties' objections alone.
- Security threats from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have become the engine of his rhetoric and his defence against corruption trials.
- Opposition figures accuse him of stirring war to protect his own position, while polarisation and racism climb.
- With a hard-right government already behind him, he must now reinvent a politics for a landscape he helped create.
On the eve of a contest in which his own party looked to be slipping, Benjamin Netanyahu once again reached for the language of fear, warning voters of a future shaped by rivals they were meant to distrust. The moment echoes a long arc in Israeli public life, in which a leader who rose through security crises learned to turn the anxieties of a divided society into the foundation of his power. What has changed is less the tactic than the room around it: a country that once recoiled from such warnings now hears them with a muted shrug, and the question facing him is whether a politician who helped reshape the landscape can still find a way to stand apart within it.
On election day this year, with Likud staring at grim exit polls, Benjamin Netanyahu warned voters that a failure to wake up would hand the country to Mansour Abbas and Ahmed Tibi, two prominent Arab politicians. It was a line he has used before. In 2015 a similar warning drew such fierce outrage that he apologised. This time, most of the criticism came from the Arab parties themselves, and the quiet elsewhere is a measure of how far Israeli politics has travelled.
His career has been built on security. He appeared in a gas mask on television during the Scud attacks of 1991, and after Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, when his road to power seemed closed, he won the 1996 election as Israel's first directly elected and youngest prime minister. Hamas and Hezbollah gave him a permanent enemy to confront and to use. As the threats shifted from states to groups and individuals, he applied the language of security to ethnic, religious and social divisions with a confidence no predecessor had shown.
He lost in 1999, but the wars of the following decade let him move fringe ideas into the mainstream while remaining inside the Right. He courted Mizrahi voters despite being Ashkenazi, backed ultra-Orthodox demands, and formed alliances with hard-right parties, leading governments almost continuously since 2009.
Security has also shielded him at home. As courts moved against him on corruption charges, he turned against the judiciary, reversing a 2012 pledge, and critics say his military campaigns against Hamas and Iran have helped delay his court appearances. Opponents now accuse him of putting his own survival ahead of Israel's security, and his rival Gadi Eisenkot mocked him as a kind of Qatari honest broker over aid to Hamas.
Today he leads a country that has embraced the Right more fully than ever, under a government more hard-line than any before it. The author suggests the once-daring Netanyahu may no longer be a novelty, and that his next challenge is to find a politics fit for the landscape he helped build.
On election day this year, with Likud facing grim exit polls, Benjamin Netanyahu warned voters that if they did not wake up, they would find themselves with a government of Mansour Abbas and Ahmed Tibi, two of the most prominent Arab politicians in Israel. It was a familiar kind of line from him. What has changed is how it landed.
In 2015, in a similar moment of Likud worry, Netanyahu told supporters that Arab voters were heading to the polls in droves and threatening the rule of the Right. The opposition's anger was sharp enough that he issued a public apology. Nearly a decade on, the main criticism of his 2026 remarks came from the Arab parties themselves, while others were largely quiet. The Indian Express explainer treats that shift as a measure of how far Israeli politics has moved, partly under his influence.
His rise was built on security. In 1991 he appeared on television in a gas mask as Iraqi Scud missiles hit Israel. A focus on security was not unusual among Israeli leaders, even if his presentation was theatrical. After Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, in the middle of the Oslo Peace Process, Netanyahu's path to the premiership looked nearly closed, given accusations about his links to Rabin's assassins and his fierce opposition to Oslo. Yet in 1996, at 46, he became Israel's first directly elected prime minister and its youngest, following a spate of Hamas bombings in Jerusalem that February. Hamas, along with Hezbollah in Lebanon, became a near-permanent non-state threat that he could both confront and use politically.
As military threats from Arab states faded and threats from groups and individuals grew, the analysis argues, Netanyahu was able to apply the language of security to ethnic, tribal, religious, cultural and social divisions in a way no earlier prime minister had done with confidence. He had said as far back as 1996 that leftists had forgotten what it is to be Jewish and thought they could put security in Arab hands. At the time, the Israeli Left was still competitive, though it had lost its dominance in 1977.
His first term ended in defeat in 1999. But 9/11, the growing Hamas threat, and Hezbollah's consolidation in southern Lebanon, especially after the 2006 war, gave him room to move fringe framings into the mainstream while staying inside the traditional Right. He paired hostility toward Arab Israeli interests with an appeal across the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi divide, protecting Mizrahi interests though he is himself Ashkenazi, and with support for ultra-Orthodox demands. The result was a majority strong enough to lead governments almost continuously since 2009. In the 2019, 2021 and 2022 elections, whose frequency itself signals deep polarisation, he formally allied with hard-right parties.
Security has also been a shield at home. Israel has no rigid written constitution and relies on Knesset-majority Basic Laws to evolve constitutionally. Between 2019 and 2025, as the judiciary sought to convict him of corruption, Netanyahu turned against it. That reversed his 2012 pledge to take down any law that threatened the independence of the courts. The explainer says he has used military campaigns he started, against Hamas since 2023 and Iran since 2025, to postpone his court appearances. Ahead of this year's elections, reports emerged that he had tried to restart hostilities with Iran, with Israel and the US acting together. The opposition increasingly accuses him of using security to protect his own position rather than to secure Israel.
Hamas has become so bound up with his security image that in 2026 an opposition candidate, Gadi Eisenkot, cast him as the Yashar of Qatar, roughly the honest broker of Qatar, a jab at his record of allowing Qatari aid to reach Hamas.
The piece closes on a problem of novelty. In 1996 Netanyahu stood out for risky politics in a system that had not fully parted with the Left. Now he operates in one that has embraced the Right, after he led a more hard-right government in 2022 to 2026 than any prime minister before him. Polarisation continues, Arab parties recorded unprecedented numbers in 2026, and the article notes a marked rise in racism and a genocide in Gaza. The author's conclusion is that Netanyahu may no longer be a novel figure, and must find a new politics for a landscape he helped build.
Citas Notables
If we don't wake up now, we'll find ourselves with a government of Mansour Abbas and Ahmed Tibi.— Benjamin Netanyahu, election day 2026
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