Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to members of the media following a meeting at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on July 8, 2025. | Bloomberg/Getty ImagesBenjamin Netanyahu has now served as prime minister of Israel longer than anyone in history — three non-consecutive stints over 18 years, or almost a quarter of the time Israel has been an independent country. And from the beginning, his power has been on the verge of collapse. About a year into his first term as prime minister, the international press smelled blood in the water. Netanyahu was facing possible indictment over a bribery scandal involving his attorney general — though, as the Washington Post noted in an editorial headlined “Can Mr. Netanyahu hang on?,” he was already “hip-deep in controversy” before that scandal erupted. After an embarrassingly botched assassination attempt targeting Hamas’ Khaled Meshal that damaged relations with Israel’s most important Arab ally, the Economist dubbed him “Israel’s serial bungler.”While Netanyahu’s “easy eloquence” appealed to supporters abroad, particularly American Republicans, the British weekly noted, “as the wayward decisions mount up, his support is starting to dwindle. He is criticised for pursuing cheap popularity, regardless of the consequences; political scandal has swirled around him; the arrogance of his assumption that the Palestinians will in the end accept whatever he offers them is beginning to be questioned.”A sentence like that could have been written at any point in the last 28 years, including in recent weeks. Polls show Netanyahu’s coalition would be out of power if elections were held today. That coalition is itself divided and in danger of falling apart at nearly any time over the contentious issue of military service for the ultra-Orthodox. He is facing potential jail time in a long-running corruption trial, as well as a commission of inquiry over the security failures that led to October 7, the most violent day in Israel’s history. Internationally, he’s under indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. He evidently takes these charges seriously enough that his flight to the UN General Assembly in New York month took a circuitous route to avoid countries that might enforce the ICC’s arrest warrant. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s signature foreign policy achievement — the Abraham Accords normalization process with Israel’s Arab neighbors — has been threatened by both the anger over the carnage in Gaza and Israel’s threats to annex the West Bank. Israel itself is increasingly isolated on the world stage, threatened with expulsion from international projects ranging from important scientific research consortiums to the Eurovision song contest.Then, last week, Netanyahu was effectively strong-armed by President Donald Trump into accepting a peace deal for Gaza that short-circuits a military operation he had already ordered and that undercuts his vow to continue fighting until Hamas is completely eliminated. (Hamas has already agreed to hand over political power but is still negotiating on other parts of the deal, including the crucial question of whether it will give up its weapons.) And yet, despite his initial reluctance, Netanyahu now appears to be embracing the deal, claiming that he had developed the plan in consultation with the US. Whether he knows it or not, the prime minister certainly looks like he was gifted yet another (almost literal) get-out-of-jail-free card by the US president. As Trump reportedly put it himself in a conversation with Netanyahu, “I don’t know why you’re always so f***ing negative. This is a win. Take it.”The deal is likely a win for the prime minister, even if it failsOn the verge of a potential end to a war that has killed tens of thousands, including thousands of children, as well as on the anniversary of the worst single day in Israeli history, it might seem reductive or even in poor taste to focus on the political fortunes of one leader. But to a greater extent than most, this war has been tied to the political fortunes of one leader. It’s been widely alleged, with a great deal of reported evidence, that Netanyahu has prolonged the war in order to maintain his grip on power. Accepting a hostage deal that entailed a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, or left either Hamas or the Palestinian authority in charge of Gaza, would likely have led to a government collapse, elections, likely political defeat, and potential jail time. Throughout his career, when faced with a seemingly impossible political dilemma with no good choices, Netanyahu’s general move has been not to choose at all. So, too, has it been in this case; as the killing continued, Netanyahu waited. And the waiting appears to have paid off. As of this writing, the success of the peace plan is still an open question, but Netanyahu probably benefits either way. Hamas responded positively, if somewhat noncommittally, to the plan on Friday. Speaking on Saturday, Netanyahu said he was optimistic that Hamas’s remaining Israeli hostages would be released in the coming days — “the living and the slain, in one go, with the [Israel Defense Forces] still deployed deep in Gaza.” Securing the hostages’ release without removing Israeli troops from Gaza would be about as close to an absolute victory as one could realistically imagine, and the plan is overwhelmingly popular with the Israeli public. In fact, the language of the plan is vague as to when, if ever, Israeli troops will have to be entirely withdrawn from Gaza. The language on Palestinian statehood is even vaguer; the Palestinian Authority would take power in Gaza only after a period of “reform” that could go on indefinitely. It’s true that Netanyahu’s key far-right allies, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have slammed the plan. Any countenancing of a two-state solution or a role for the Palestinian Authority in postwar Gaza is unacceptable to them, no matter how vaguely worded. But both men are currently in positions of enormous power and influence after years in the political wilderness when they were shunned by the mainstream. They’re likely to think twice about giving up their current positions. Even if they do, opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz have enthusiastically backed the Trump peace plan and offered to support Netanyahu’s government temporarily if his far-right partners bolt. Both Gantz and Lapid have, in the past, refused to join a Netanyahu-led government, but given the overwhelming public support for the plan, it’s not out of the question that could change either. In any event, Netanyahu can head into Israel’s next elections — which are scheduled for October 2026 but could be called sooner — campaigning as the leader who defeated Hamas, brought the hostages home, and bombed Iran’s nuclear program too. Yes, Netanyahu may have looked less than Churchillian as he effectively took orders from Trump over the past week, but Israel is one of the few countries where the US president polls well, so that may not be as much of a liability as it would be elsewhere. On the other hand, if Hamas ultimately balks at releasing its hostages, or tries to stretch on negotiations indefinitely, Trump has indicated he will give Israel carte blanche to “finish the job” in Gaza. In other words, the war would continue. This would be a catastrophe for Gaza and the remaining hostages and deepen Israel’s international isolation, but it would allow Netanyahu to maintain the current status quo. A third, and perhaps most likely, outcome is that Hamas will agree in principle, but the two sides will haggle over the details and implementation, which also amounts to the war continuing. While this would be a disappointing outcome for Israelis, if Hamas refuses, it will allow the prime minister to make the case — which is likely to be more effective at home than abroad — that he has given the group an opportunity for a diplomatic way out and that the only option left is to continue crushing it by military force. Living to fight another dayAt this point in his career, Netanyahu is something like this species of shark that will die if they stop swimming. The prime minister has been on trial since 2020 on a variety of corruption charges that could potentially bring up to 10 years jail time. (In Israel, this is not an idle threat: Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, was sentenced to six years in prison on bribery charges after leaving office and served 18 months.)Meanwhile, a public reckoning for the specific security failures that allowed the October 7 attacks to take place, as well as the years-long policy of permitting the funding of Hamas in Gaza in order to keep Palestinian governance divided, is likely coming for Netanyahu after the war’s conclusion. A scathing independent commission last year blasted Netanyahu “for accepting the doctrine of ‘money for quiet,’ and utterly ignoring all other perceptions.”Netanyahu’s ability to push back against both processes only works as long as he’s prime minister. There are also the international efforts to hold Netanyahu to account. But two months after fellow International Criminal Court-indictee Vladimir Putin walked the red carpet in Alaska, with the war in Ukraine still raging, it’s hard to imagine that Netanyahu’s international isolation will be permanent. He may soon be able to fly direct routes to New York again. The Abraham Accords and Israel’s regional normalization process may not be entirely off the rails either. Last year, the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman opined that Netanyahu would have to choose between “Rafah or Riyadh” — doubling down on the destruction of Gaza or deepening relations with neighboring powers like Saudi Arabia. With Arab countries taking part ownership of Trump’s peace deal, it seems at least possible that he won’t have to choose. This is not to say that all Netanyahu’s problems are solved — and Israel’s certainly aren’t. The criminal trials loom; Netanyahu’s victories in next year’s elections aren’t assured; and the issue of annexation of the West Bank, which the Israeli right is demanding but which both regional governments and, for the moment at least, the Trump administration opposes, will continue to be a dilemma as well the contentious question of Orthodox military service. More consequentially, the brutal war in Gaza has deepened Israel’s political isolation. Even if governments may lose interest in sanctioning Israel, it has lost an enormous amount of public support, including among constituencies like American Jews, who were once among its staunchest supporters. Though Netanyahu has made plain his preference for having Trump in office, rather than any Democrat, he has also found this president much more difficult to defy than Barack Obama or Joe Biden. This could pose problems for him down the road.But if we’ve learned anything after Netanyahu’s two decades in power, it’s that, for him, those are problems for another day.