Netanyahu Now More Dangerous Than Ever – OpEd

June 3, 2026 
By Arab News
By Yossi Mekelberg

If elections are normally times of celebration, either for retaining successful governments or for renewing politics with new faces and ideas, the forthcoming general election in Israel instead inspires a mixture of hope and dread. Hope that the country may rid itself of the most disastrous government in its history; dread over what further damage this coalition government might inflict before voters finally go to the polls. In the meantime, the Knesset is slowly proceeding with votes on a bill to dissolve itself.

The exact date of the only opinion poll that truly matters — the one in which citizens cast their votes — has not yet been decided, though by law the election must take place no later than Oct. 27. That may seem a short time away, but with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Likud Party and their coalition partners unlikely, at least according to opinion polls, to be able to form the next government, they may feel they are living on borrowed time.

Consequently, they might be increasingly tempted to “complete” their assault on the foundations of the democratic system, making any future reversal more difficult. They may also seek to provoke, or at least exacerbate, one of the fronts on which Israel is already in a state of war or conflict, either as a demonstration of strength or even as a pretext to postpone the election.


This may sound alarmist, but the behavior of the PM and most of his coalition partners since this government came to power — the sixth, and hopefully final, Netanyahu government — has provided every reason to suspect its ill intentions, both domestically and beyond Israel’s borders, including in the Occupied Territories.

First and foremost, Netanyahu is motivated by the desire to delay, obstruct and possibly ultimately cancel his trial on three counts of corruption. Regrettably, he has so far enjoyed considerable success. He has repeatedly used the wars of the past two and a half years to postpone his court testimony. Last week, the District Court in Jerusalem, where the trial is taking place, was forced to cancel an entire day’s hearing after the prime minister’s lawyers informed the judges that he was too exhausted because he had been dealing with “security and diplomacy matters until the late hours of the night.”

It would be foolish to suggest that governing the country is not enormously demanding. However, that cannot justify Netanyahu continuously receiving special treatment from the courts that no ordinary citizen would ever enjoy. The danger is that he appears to believe that, if he forms the next government and remains in office, he will eventually be able to marginalize the legal system altogether and terminate his trial. That alone should serve as an additional incentive to remove him through the ballot box, because such an outcome would mark the collapse of equality before the law and drive public trust in politics to an even lower point.

Israel enters this election campaign while negotiations to end the war with Iran continue between Washington and Tehran — talks in which Israel remains largely sidelined. While Israeli troops are becoming increasingly entrenched in Lebanon and continue to suffer losses from Hezbollah attacks. While more than half of Gaza remains occupied by Israel without any clear exit strategy. And while the security situation in the West Bank steadily deteriorates. Under such circumstances, what exactly does Netanyahu have with which to convince the electorate that he deserves another term in office?

This may offer grounds for cautious optimism, but it also makes Netanyahu potentially more dangerous than ever. His desperation to win the forthcoming election, or at least ensure that the opposition cannot form a coalition government, means that either victory or political stalemate represents his best chance of remaining in power. That desperation carries the risk that he may stop at nothing, whether by deepening internal divisions — as we already see verbal and even physical attacks on political opponents — or escalating confrontations abroad. Netanyahu will remain cynical until the bitter political end, supported by a government dominated by extremists.

Distrust in Netanyahu extends far beyond the opposition and its supporters. Many within his own coalition also no longer trust him. He has become the archetype of the politician who promises the world but delivers an atlas.

To the Israeli public, he promised security, yet they received Oct. 7 with all its devastating losses, prolonged wars, and endless duty for reservists and extended compulsory service for conscripts. There has been no “total victory” over Hamas or Hezbollah, while Israel must watch as the US negotiates with Iran on terms over which Netanyahu has little influence. Yet he continues to project defiance and explain why the objectives he set for these wars remain achievable.


The ultra-Orthodox parties also no longer fully trust Netanyahu. Their leaders have openly said that the PM let them down through his inability to fulfill his promise to preserve exemptions from military service for their communities. At the same time, he has angered many Israelis who do serve in the military by making such promises in the first place. Even within his coalition, some lawmakers have proven to possess less “flexible” ethics than Netanyahu himself and have resisted supporting these arrangements.

Moreover, this election will inevitably revolve around Oct. 7 and its aftermath, while the government unscrupulously continues to block an independent inquiry into what happened. A leader with so much to hide, who wields enormous power yet refuses to relinquish it, inevitably becomes dangerous, firstly to his own people but also to the wider region.

Netanyahu is also an avid reader of opinion polls — a skill that has helped him navigate and, unfortunately, manipulate both the political system and the electorate. Without that political instinct, he would never have become the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history. This will make the coming weeks and months particularly volatile. An opportunistic politician such as Netanyahu could either manufacture a crisis himself or allow some of his predictably unpredictable coalition partners to behave irresponsibly.

This has already been evident in the conduct of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose behavior toward the detained Gaza flotilla peace activists was thuggish in the name of national chauvinism of the lowest kind. This occurred alongside the daily harassment of government opponents by Netanyahu’s supporters, while the police appear unwilling to intervene meaningfully or bring perpetrators to justice.

All of this sounds worrying because it is. To a significant extent, the forthcoming election is not merely about its eventual result, important though that is, but about the resilience of Israeli society, the survival of its democratic institutions and the restoration of rationality in the country’s foreign policy after years during which this government has severely tarnished all three.

Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg