The Wheels are Falling Off Netanyahu's Government

The Atlantic

6 days ago

Outside of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu appears ascendant. After the Israeli leader inflicted heavy losses on Iran last month, The New York Times dubbed the apparent victory his 'political resurrection' and 'the culmination of a hard-fought comeback from the lowest point in his long political career.' Inside Israel, however, the reality could not be more different.
As has been the case for more than two years, polls continue to show that Netanyahu's coalition would lose the next election, were it to be held today. And this week, his government lost two of its parties, effectively leaving it with control of just 50 of the Israeli Parliament's 120 seats. The result: Netanyahu now sits atop a de facto minority government that is no longer able to legislate, and Israel is careening toward new elections, most likely in early 2026.
The reason for this unraveling is twofold. To maintain his grip on power, despite his personal unpopularity and ongoing corruption trial, Netanyahu has relied upon two constituencies: the ultra-Orthodox religious parties (which hold 18 seats) and the far-right ultranationalist parties (which hold 14 seats). Both of these groups support policies at odds with the views of the Israeli majority, and both are now at odds with Netanyahu.
For more than a decade, the ultra-Orthodox have backed Netanyahu even as many Israelis have turned on him. In exchange, the prime minister has provided generous state subsidies to ultra-Orthodox institutions and protected the community from Israel's military draft: Whereas most Jewish Israelis serve in the Israel Defense Forces, most young ultra-Orthodox men are instead paid by the government to study religious texts. This arrangement has been profoundly unpopular even among Netanyahu's voters but was tolerated during peacetime as a necessary concession for continued right-wing governance.
Since October 7, that tolerance has collapsed. Faced with an open-ended, multifront war, Israel is in desperate need of more manpower and can no longer countenance exempting the ultra-Orthodox—the country's fastest-growing demographic—from military service. Many Israelis, including those on the right, have become incensed by what they perceive as a lack of social solidarity from the ultra-Orthodox community, whose members have largely continued to go about their daily lives even as their neighbors have been forced to leave their families and businesses to fight Israel's wars. The Israeli supreme court has also ruled that the ultra-Orthodox carve-out violates the principle of equality under the law, tasking the legislature with instituting a fairer regime.
This popular outcry, coupled with Netanyahu's political dependence on the ultra-Orthodox, has put the prime minister in a vise: He can either continue exempting the ultra-Orthodox and anger not just the public and the courts but also his own party, or revoke that exemption and lose the ultra-Orthodox—and with them, his coalition. Of late, Netanyahu has attempted to fudge the issue by pushing through legislation that would create a technical process for drafting the ultra-Orthodox but in practice make the new requirements easy to evade. This effort has met resistance in his party, however, and the bill has not passed—leading to the departure of the ultra-Orthodox parties from the government this week. For now, those parties have said that they won't vote to force new elections, giving Netanyahu time to try to appease them. But unless he can figure out a way to pass a bill that somehow satisfies the ultra-Orthodox and their critics, it's merely a matter of time before his erstwhile allies completely switch sides.
And that's not Netanyahu's only problem. He is also facing threats of secession from his far-right partners, who are fundamentally opposed to ending the war in Gaza, because they seek to ethnically cleanse the enclave and populate it with Jewish settlements. Most Israelis oppose this far-right fever dream and support a deal that would end the war in exchange for the release of hostages. But as with military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox, Netanyahu here is beholden to a radical minority whose votes keep him in power. At the same time, the Israeli leader is under growing pressure from President Donald Trump to end the Gaza war, once again putting him in an impossible position. If Netanyahu doesn't strike a deal, he risks alienating the U.S. president; if he does, he is likely to lose one or both of the far-right parties in his government.
Given these proliferating threats to his position, Netanyahu has been doing what he does best: playing for time. The summer recess for Israel's Parliament begins on July 27 and extends through the Jewish holidays, until late October. During that time, the Parliament cannot vote to dissolve itself, and so it would be hard for lawmakers to compel new elections. Netanyahu could reach a cease-fire in Gaza, for example, and the far-right would not be able to immediately bring down the coalition. The prime minister just has to run out the clock until the end of the month, and then he will have space either to get all of his partners back on his side—an unlikely prospect—or to make moves that upset his coalition but put him in a better position for the election that would be called upon the Parliament's return.
Whenever that contest does happen—most likely around January—Netanyahu will face arguably the steepest political challenge of his career. Last election, his coalition received just 48.4 percent of the vote, attaining a parliamentary majority only because of a technicality in Israel's electoral system. That coalition has been losing in the polls since April 2023, and no amount of success against Hezbollah or Tehran has altered the trajectory. Thanks to his campaign in Iran, Netanyahu may be in his strongest position since the catastrophe of October 7. But after alienating so many of his allies and the majority of the Israeli people, that still might not be enough.