5 min readOct 26, 2026 02:16 PM IST First published on: Oct 26, 2026 at 02:15 PM ISTIsrael is going to vote on October 27. Once again, Benjamin Netanyahu is at the centre of the polls. Whether or not he returns as prime minister is what the rest of the world is curious about, and it is the most critical issue for Israelis. The October 7, 2023 terror attacks by Hamas, the inconclusive wars that followed, the growing criticism of Israel across the world, and the corruption charges against Netanyahu – these are all key electoral issues. That Netanyahu is still in the conversation as a major contender is a source of bafflement to many.Netanyahu became prime minister for the first time in 1996 and has dominated Israel’s domestic politics and foreign policy for the last three decades. So far, he has contested a total of 11 national elections and won six of them. In total, he has served as PM for over 19 years. That is indeed the longest period for a person in that office. The country’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, served for 13 years. In his long political life, Netanyahu and his party, Likud (an economically right-wing and socially conservative party), did not win a clear majority (61 seats out of 120 seats in the country’s legislature). He has, however, been able to bring together coalitions comprising several smaller parties based on interests, ideology, and political convenience.Israel is a country of coalition politics. Between 2019 and 2021, Israel went through four national elections because no leader could present a coalition of 61 seats. In the last election of 2022, Likud got 32 seats, and Netanyahu succeeded in forming a coalition of religious, nationalist-centrist, right, or extreme right parties. After the colossal security failure and intelligence lapses on October 7, the government and the PM in particular were seen by many as responsible for the unprecedented attacks: 1,200 dead in less than 24 hours and around 251 taken hostage. Such a tragedy would have ended other political careers, as with Prime Minister Golda Meir when there was a major intelligence failure during the 1973 war or the resignation of the Defence Minister Ariel Sharon for the 10-week siege of Beirut in 1982 that caused a massacre of the Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila by Allied Lebanese Forces (Phalangist) militia members.AdvertisementAlso Read | Lula’s narrow victory shows the resilience of the right in BrazilThe story of Netanyahu’s rise and dominance is also the complex story of Israel for the last three decades. When he became PM in 1996, it was following Israel’s domestic backlash against the Oslo Peace Process. He advocated no compromise, as he does now, on the part of Israel for the two-state solution. To him, Palestinian leaders – Yasser Arafat in the past and now Hamas — would use violence against Israelis if they could. He was vindicated when the Oslo process failed due to Arafat’s last-hour hesitation in 2000-2001 and the suicide bombing of the Al-Aqsa Intifada led by Hamas in the early 2000s. More than 1,000 Israelis were killed between 2000 and 2005. Since then, Netanyahu has advocated an “Iron Wall” approach and a policy of retaliation rather than compromise with the Palestinian nationalists. According to him, it is only the “strong who survive” in the Middle East.There is much more to Netanyahu’s appeal to his base than war and terrorism. Israel was founded on a strong socialist ethos and till about the 1990s, its economy was heavily centralised, state-controlled and dominated by labour unions (Histadrut). Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv but spent a significant portion of his adult life in the US, where he studied architecture and business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also worked in corporate consulting in Boston. He returned to Israel as a quintessential American who believed in the free-market economy, tax cuts, foreign direct investment, entrepreneurship, and innovation. He turned intelligence and research into a social change for all Israelis, and it is in the last three decades that Israel has been recognised as a “Startup Nation” — a global innovation powerhouse driven by private equity, venture capital, and fintech.After Americanising Israel’s kibbutz (socialist) economy, he turned his politics to Israeli society’s fault lines. Israel is a country of immigrants and has been deeply divided between Ashkenazi (European-origin Jews) and Mizrahi (Middle East-Asian-origin Jews) and religious conservatives and liberals, doves and hawks, etc. The Likud party before him advocated for the Mizrahi Jews who were marginalised in Israeli politics, society and cultural-intellectual spaces. Netanyahu caters to ultra-religious who do not serve in the army and receive plump subsidies from the state exchequer, as well as those religious Zionists who remain unapologetic about the settlements in the West Bank.AdvertisementNetanyahu is on the ballot for the 12th time. Israel stands at a critical moment in history today, and the kind of leadership emerging out of this election is anxiously watched inside and outside the country. Israel’s domestic mayhem and external threats do demand more from its leaders than just coalition skills or Hebrew expression “combina” (“jugaad” in our terms).The writer is Professor and Executive Director, Jindal Centre for Israel Studies, Jindal School of International Affairs, OP Jindal Global University