Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is navigating what many analysts describe as the most precarious phase of his political career. His inability to deliver strategic victories in Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza has emboldened critics across the political spectrum, from former allies to opposition figures, and left him increasingly reliant on far-right coalition partners who demand ever more aggressive policies in exchange for their support.
Former Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon, who served as deputy prime minister between 2007 and 2009, offered a blunt assessment in a recent interview with Radio Galey. “In the final result, we did not win,” Ramon said. “We did not win in Lebanon, we did not win in Iran, and we did not win against Hamas.” His remarks reflect a growing consensus that Netanyahu’s wartime strategy has failed to achieve its stated objectives.
Another prominent critic, former Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot, who joined Netanyahu’s emergency war government after October 7, 2023, before resigning in June 2024, has accused the prime minister of ceding Israel’s political independence to US President Donald Trump. Eisenkot argues that this reliance has weakened Israel strategically, even as Netanyahu claims to be protecting national security.
Far-Right Leverage and Escalation
Netanyahu’s political vulnerability has been exploited by his own coalition partners. Since the formation of the current government on December 29, 2022—widely regarded as the most right-wing in Israel’s history—figures such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have extracted concessions in exchange for their continued support. Each battlefield setback has become an opportunity for expanded settlement construction, harsher measures against Palestinians, and deeper entrenchment of extremist policies.
Unable to deliver clear victories, Netanyahu has turned perpetual war into a political survival strategy. The result has been a genocidal war in Gaza, widespread devastation in Lebanon, and a dangerous confrontation with Iran that has repeatedly brought the region to the brink of a wider catastrophe. For a time, unwavering US support and the international community’s failure to hold a wanted war criminal accountable provided the political space for these bloody calculations.
Yet that formula may be nearing its limits. If Netanyahu can no longer sustain the wars that have prolonged his political life for nearly three years, analysts warn he may escalate where resistance is weakest: the occupied West Bank. Historically, when Israel fails to secure a strategic breakthrough on one front, it seeks compensation on another—typically where Palestinians are most vulnerable and where international scrutiny is weakest.
Regarding Iran, there is growing recognition that the current confrontation is unsustainable and that some form of arrangement will eventually emerge. Similarly, Israel’s ambition of permanently occupying parts of Lebanese territory remains untenable. As Israeli elections approach, there is a reasonable fear of further escalation in Gaza, pushing both the death toll and the level of destruction to new heights. According to Gaza health authorities, nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire agreement was announced in October, bringing the overall death toll of Israel’s genocide in Gaza to 73,000 Palestinians.
Though Israel’s war has already failed to break Palestinian steadfastness, the broader objective remains unchanged: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the transformation of the strip into a space that can no longer sustain Palestinian life.
West Bank Annexation Accelerates
The West Bank presents a different challenge. There, Israel faces a fragmented political landscape and a Palestinian Authority that refuses to develop an effective strategy for confronting accelerating Israeli violence, ethnic cleansing, home demolitions, land confiscation, and the relentless expansion of illegal settlements. This vulnerability has enabled Israel to move from discussing annexation to implementing it in practice.
The strategy rests on two interconnected pillars: extreme violence and displacement on the one hand, and rapid settlement expansion on the other. According to an Oxfam International study published on June 12, Israel has killed 1,244 Palestinians, including 268 children, in the occupied West Bank since 2023—more than the total number killed during the previous 17 years combined. This bloodshed has been accompanied by large-scale displacement that has already uprooted nearly 46,000 Palestinians, many of them from refugee camps and vulnerable communities across the northern West Bank.
An Amnesty International report published on June 10 documented the full or partial displacement of at least 117 Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities between January 2023 and April 2026. The violence, displacement, settlement expansion, and land seizures are not isolated developments but components of a coherent political project. In September 2025, Smotrich openly proposed the annexation of 82% of the occupied West Bank. What was once presented as a political vision is now steadily being translated into facts on the ground.
The era of Netanyahu may be nearing its end, but the policies he has enabled are likely to outlast him. For Palestinians across the occupied territories, the price of his political survival continues to mount.
