JERUSALEM: Israel’s hawkish right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dominated his country’s politics since the 1990s but has now left its society more bitterly divided than it has been in decades.
The silver-haired and gravel-voiced 73-year-old is known by his nickname “Bibi” to his loyal Likud party followers who revere him for his stated mission to defend the Jewish people against all threats, from Arab militants to arch-foe Iran.
To his opponents, Netanyahu is the “crime minister” who, while fighting corruption charges in court, is also leading a push to curb the powers of the judiciary in a way they fear will weaken democracy itself.
A wily strategist and political survivor, Netanyahu has spent a total of 15 years in the prime minister’s office, making him Israel’s longest-serving leader. He has also outlived multiple US presidential administrations.
Under his rule, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process of the 1990s all but stalled while Jewish settlements have been rapidly expanded in the occupied West Bank, eroding hopes for Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu’s most recent comeback saw him take the reins again in December, after a string of elections and a short-lived multi-party government chiefly united in their strong opposition to him.
This time around, however, Netanyahu’s deepening isolation forced him to team up for the first time with far-right nationalist parties previously considered fringe groups, and ultra-Orthodox lawmakers.
Under Israel’s most hard-right government to date, the conflict with the Palestinians has turned more deadly in recent months, leading to major West Bank military raids and rocket exchanges with Gaza.
Israeli society itself has been convulsed, marked by weekly mass street protests against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan that have sparked warnings of a looming “civil war” within the 75-year-old state.
Netanyahu’s policies have strained relations with Washington, the country’s traditional bedrock ally, and seen US President Joe Biden repeatedly criticise the judicial overhaul and settlements expansion.
On Sunday, Netanyahu underwent surgery to be fitted with a pacemaker.
But, ever the fighter, he left little doubt that he would hurl himself straight back into the rough and tumble of politics, as the months-old judicial reform battle looked set to near its peak.
Brother’s death
Born in Tel Aviv on October 21, 1949, Netanyahu is the son of a historian who was active in right-wing Zionist groups, an ideological inheritance that helped shape his political career.
Netanyahu has two sons with his wife Sara and a daughter from a previous marriage.
As a young man in the late 1960s, Netanyahu served in an army commando unit, seeing combat in multiple engagements and reaching the rank of captain.
He was marked strongly by the death of his elder brother Yonatan, in a daring 1976 special forces raid to free hostages at Uganda’s Entebbe airport.
In his memoir, Netanyahu recalled that he thought he may “never recover” from the loss: “When the news reached me that Yoni had died in Entebbe, I felt as if my life had ended.”
Raised partly in the United States, Netanyahu graduated from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), later working as a business consultant and then as an Israeli diplomat.
He regularly appeared on US television from the late 1980s, defending Israel and raising his profile both at home and abroad.
Back in Israel, Netanyahu became Likud’s leader in 1993 and led the party to victory in 1996 as Israel’s youngest-ever prime minister, aged just 46.
He lost power in 1999, but regained it 10 years later and stayed at the helm for more than a decade.
‘My ancient people’
Netanyahu has never engaged in substantive peace talks with the Palestinians, but has overseen a rapid expansion of West Bank settlements that are considered illegal under international law.
His government, which includes hardline pro-settlement groups, has overseen a rise in armed raids against West Bank militant strongholds such as Jenin, which Netanyahu recently labelled a “nest of terrorists”.
Netanyahu’s other major focus has been fighting arch-foe Iran and limiting its nuclear ambitions, both on the political stage and in a shadow war that has included sabotage and assassinations.
Close to former US president Donald Trump, Netanyahu clinched a diplomatic triumph by normalising relations with several Arab states under the Washington-brokered Abraham Accords.
After establishing ties with the United Arab Emirates and other states, a similar breakthrough with Saudi Arabia would be a “quantum leap for peace”, Netanyahu has told Dubai-based Al Arabiya.
He reflected on his achievements in his autobiography, writing that “as a soldier, I fought to defend Israel on battlefields.
“As a diplomat, I fended off attacks against its legitimacy in world forums, as finance minister and prime minister, I sought to multiply its economic and political power”.
Throughout it all, Netanyahu wrote, his aim had been to help “secure the future of my ancient people”.
