In Israel, Netanyahu’s ultimate legacy is the opposition he has forged

As Israel heads to the polls on October 27, Benjamin Netanyahu’s most enduring domestic legacy may be the right-wing opposition he faces, analysts say.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes a selfie with a supporter as he arrives to cast his vote in his Likud Party's primaries in August [File: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool/AFP]

Benjamin Netanyahu had barely reached the United Nations podium when a sea of delegates jumped from their seats and began walking out in protest at the Israeli prime minister’s speech at the UN General Assembly in late September.

Undeterred, a grinning Netanyahu, who is seeking re-election later this month while being wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Gaza, shot back: “If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t left the hall, please do so now.”

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For his supporters watching in Israel, it was precisely what they wanted to hear .

“When they see Netanyahu at the United Nations,” his former aide, Mitchell Barak, told Al Jazeera, “that’s what they want – and it’s hard for them to imagine anyone else doing that.”

He added: “For many in Israel, but not all, he’s the only man that can truly lead Israel. He makes them proud to be Jewish.”

On October 27, Israel must choose between Netanyahu and an assorted number of rivals who are unified by little other than their absolute opposition to Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

In the eyes of both his supporters and his opponents, as well as much of the world, Netanyahu has become the face of modern Israel.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1949 to Benzion Netanyahu and Tzila Segal, he spent his early years between Israel and the United States, the few constants in his life being the profoundly pessimistic views of his father – a right-wing historian who saw a world fundamentally opposed to the existence of Jews – and the military legacy of his brother, Yonatan, who was killed in 1976 while leading a raid to rescue hijacked Israeli hostages in Entebbe, Uganda.

Since then, Netanyahu has gone through numerous iterations.

In 1982, he was named deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. Two years later, he was appointed Israel’s ambassador to the UN, before returning to Israel to join the cabinet of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir as deputy foreign minister in 1988.

In 1996, Netanyahu became Israel’s youngest prime minister, leading the first in a series of coalitions that also saw him serving a record 12-year tenure from 2009 to 2021. He returned to power for a sixth term the next year, leading the most far-right government in Israel’s history.

From the outset of his political career, he faced growing accusations of having deliberately engineered division to further his own political and personal ends.

“Netanyahu is the perfect encapsulation of Israel’s political polarisation,” said political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg. Describing Netanyahu as “always” being “in campaigning mode”, he said the Israeli leader “is very good at building coalitions that reflect public opinion, as well as steering that opinion in his own direction”.

Under Netanyahu’s leadership, Israel has continued to lurch to the right, rejecting the path towards a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict set in motion by his predecessor, the assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. At the same time, vast swaths of the Israeli electorate have also grown accustomed to the violent expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and reconciled themselves to the genocide in Gaza following the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023 – for which many still blame Netanyahu for alleged security failures – as well as the multiple wars waged at his direction since.

In July 2018, Netanyahu’s coalition passed the Nation-State Law, declaring the right to national self-determination “ unique to the Jewish people ”, stripping Arabic of its status as an official language and making the development of Jewish settlements a national value. In the law’s wake, settler violence in the occupied West Bank has surged, with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recording 1,291 attacks in 2023 and 1,835 in 2025. At least 1,071 Palestinians, including 233 children, have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7, 2023, according to OCHA, amid what a senior UN official called “virtually no accountability”.

More immediately, Netanyahu’s current coalition has seen some of Israel’s most controversial figures – such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir , convicted of incitement to racism and support for a “terrorist” group, and the explicitly pro-settlement Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – placed at the heart of power.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrates after Israel’s parliament passed a law making the death penalty a default sentence for Palestinians convicted in military courts of deadly attacks [File: Oren Ben Hakoon/Reuters]

“Netanyahu didn’t create the racism and fascism in Israel, but he’s helped it,” said outgoing parliamentarian Aida Touma-Sliman, of the left-wing Hadash party. “He’s smart. He knows exactly what he’s doing when he includes people like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir in his government, and he knows the outcome of those appointments.”

“He thrives in chaos,” said Barak, Netanyahu’s former aide from the 1990s. “He’s all about the big picture, of ends justifying means.”

Running through the prime minister’s recent military campaigns have been his long-standing battles against any kind of domestic judicial restraint. Dogged by corruption cases dating back to 2019, which could see him serve time in prison if convicted, he has been locked in a confrontation with the same legal establishment attempting to hold him to account.

In January 2023, he and his right-wing allies sought to overhaul the judiciary , shaking off much of the oversight of the courts over government action. The proposals led to demonstrations on an unprecedented scale, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to protest against the contentious move. In June 2024, Netanyahu went so far as to appear to suggest that the division created by his reforms was somehow responsible for his own heavily criticised response to the October 7 attack.

The ‘devil’ you know

Still, while opinion polls show Netanyahu’s Likud party and its allies tied with the broad anti-Netanyahu bloc of similarly right-wing and militaristic parties, the prime minister’s support has weakened. Likud won 32 seats in the 2022 election, but most recent polls project a gain of about 20 to 22, with former supporters appearing to shift either to the opposition or to harder-line right-wing parties.

The alliance opposing Netanyahu has yet to nominate an official leader, but former army chief Gadi Eisenkot is widely seen as its most likely candidate for prime minister.

“We need to be clear about this,” said Barak. “He’s essentially running unopposed. It’s Netanyahu versus a coalition of opponents.”

“Think about it,” said Touma-Sliman, pointing out the double standards after the prominent leader of a party representing Palestinian citizens of Israel was forced to withdraw from the election over his remarks about the Gaza war. “He’s helped create a system where Arab MK Sami Abu Shehadeh is barred from running, and he, a war criminal who has led his country through a genocide, is not”.

For his supporters, noted Flaschenberg, Netanyahu “remains Israel’s only possible leader”. But for his opponents, “He’s the devil. He’s corruption personified, responsible for everything leading up to October 7 and everything afterwards.”

However, his ultimate legacy may still lie ahead, the analyst suggested, recalling the words of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who once cited the rightward tilt of the opposition as her greatest legacy.

“Netanyahu’s legacy lies with the opposition. All of the main contenders are right-wing, militaristic and ultimately racist,” said Flaschenberg. “That’s Netanyahu’s legacy.”

分析人士称，随着以色列于 10 月 27 日举行大选，本杰明·内塔尼亚胡在国内留下的最持久的政治遗产可能是他所面临的右翼反对派。

以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡在8月抵达利库德集团党内初选投票站投票时，与一名支持者自拍。[图片：Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool/AFP]

本杰明·内塔尼亚胡刚踏上联合国讲台，一大群代表就从座位上跳起来，开始退场抗议这位以色列总理在9月下旬于联合国大会上的讲话。

内塔尼亚胡毫不气馁，面带笑容地反驳道：“如果还有其他道德懦夫还没离开大厅，请现在就离开。”他本月晚些时候将寻求连任，同时还因在加沙犯下战争罪行而被国际刑事法院通缉。

列表 1/4：加沙种族灭绝战争如何影响以色列选举

内塔尼亚胡要求调查获奖加沙电影《纳扎》的资料来源（共4条，此为第2条）

列表 3/4：如果内塔尼亚胡下台，巴勒斯坦人的处境真的会有所改变吗？

列表 4/4：尽管与内塔尼亚胡有着长期的交情，但随着以色列公投临近，特朗普的态度仍不明朗。

对于在以色列观看比赛的他的支持者来说，这正是他们想听到的。

“当他们在联合国看到内塔尼亚胡时，”他的前助手米切尔·巴拉克告诉半岛电视台，“这就是他们想要的——而且他们很难想象其他人会这样做。”

他补充道：“对许多以色列人来说（但并非所有人），他是唯一能够真正领导以色列的人。他让他们为自己是犹太人而感到自豪。”

10月27日，以色列必须在内塔尼亚胡和众多竞争对手之间做出选择，这些竞争对手除了坚决反对以色列任期最长的总理之外，几乎没有什么共同点。

在他的支持者、反对者以及世界许多人眼中，内塔尼亚胡已经成为现代以色列的代表人物。

他于 1949 年出生于特拉维夫，父亲是本齐翁·内塔尼亚胡，母亲是齐拉·西格尔。他的童年时期在以色列和美国之间度过，生活中为数不多的不变因素是他父亲的悲观主义观点——他的父亲是一位右翼历史学家，认为世界从根本上反对犹太人的存在——以及他哥哥约纳坦的军事遗产。约纳坦于 1976 年在乌干达恩德培领导营救被劫持的以色列人质的突袭行动时牺牲。

此后，内塔尼亚胡经历了多次更迭。

1982年，他被任命为以色列驻华盛顿大使馆副馆长。两年后，他被任命为以色列驻联合国大使，之后于1988年返回以色列，加入时任总理伊扎克·沙米尔的内阁，担任外交部副部长。

1996年，内塔尼亚胡成为以色列最年轻的总理，领导了一系列联合政府中的第一个，并在2009年至2021年间创纪录地执政12年。第二年，他第六次连任，领导了以色列历史上最极右翼的政府。

从他政治生涯伊始，他就面临着越来越多的指控，称他故意制造分裂以达到自己的政治和个人目的。

政治分析家尼姆罗德·弗拉申伯格表示：“内塔尼亚胡完美地体现了以色列政治的极化。”他形容内塔尼亚胡“总是”处于“竞选模式”，并指出这位以色列领导人“非常擅长组建反映民意的联盟，同时也善于引导民意朝着自己的方向发展”。

在内塔尼亚胡的领导下，以色列持续右倾，拒绝了其前任、遇刺身亡的伊扎克·拉宾所开启的以巴冲突两国方案。与此同时，以色列选民中很大一部分人也逐渐习惯了在被占领的西岸地区暴力扩张非法定居点，并对2023年10月7日哈马斯领导的袭击事件后加沙地带发生的种族灭绝事件——许多人至今仍将此次事件归咎于内塔尼亚胡所谓的安全失职——以及此后在他领导下发动的多场战争习以为常。

2018年7月，内塔尼亚胡领导的联合政府通过了《民族国家法》，宣布民族自决权“是犹太民族独有的”，剥夺了阿拉伯语的官方语言地位，并将发展犹太人定居点列为国家价值观。该法生效后，被占领的西岸地区的定居者暴力事件激增。联合国人道主义事务协调厅（OCHA）记录显示，2023年发生了1291起袭击事件，2025年发生了1835起。据OCHA统计，自2023年10月7日以来，至少有1071名巴勒斯坦人在西岸被以色列军队或定居者杀害，其中包括233名儿童。一位联合国高级官员称，这些暴力事件“几乎没有任何问责”。

更直接地说，内塔尼亚胡目前的联合政府将以色列一些最具争议的人物——例如因煽动种族主义和支持“恐怖组织”而被定罪的国家安全部长伊塔马尔·本-格维尔，以及明确支持定居点建设的财政部长贝扎莱尔·斯莫特里奇——置于权力核心。

以色列极右翼国家安全部长伊塔马尔·本-格维尔在以色列议会通过一项法律后庆祝，该法律规定，对在军事法庭被判犯有致命袭击罪的巴勒斯坦人，死刑是默认刑罚。[图片：奥伦·本·哈孔/路透社]

“内塔尼亚胡并非以色列种族主义和法西斯主义的始作俑者，但他助长了这种风气，”即将卸任的左翼哈达什党议员艾达·图玛-斯利曼说道。“他很聪明。他很清楚自己任命斯莫特里奇和本-格维尔这样的人进入政府的用意，也明白这些任命会带来怎样的后果。”

“他擅长在混乱中生存，”巴拉克说道，他是内塔尼亚胡上世纪90年代的助手。“他只关注大局，认为结果可以为手段辩护。”

贯穿总理近期军事行动的，是他长期以来与国内司法约束的斗争。他身陷多起可追溯至2019年的腐败案件，一旦罪名成立，可能面临牢狱之灾。与此同时，他与试图追究其责任的司法机构也陷入了僵局。

2023年1月，他和他的右翼盟友试图改革司法体系，摆脱法院对政府行为的大部分监督。这些提议引发了前所未有的示威游行，数十万人走上街头抗议这一争议性举措。2024年6月，内塔尼亚胡甚至暗示，他改革造成的社会分裂是他本人对10月7日袭击事件应对措施饱受诟病的原因之一。

你所熟知的“魔鬼”

尽管民调显示内塔尼亚胡领导的利库德集团及其盟友与由同样右翼和军国主义政党组成的广泛的反内塔尼亚胡联盟支持率持平，但总理的支持率已经下降。利库德集团在2022年大选中赢得了32个席位，但最近的大多数民调预测其席位将增加约20至22个，而此前的支持者似乎正在转向反对党或更强硬的右翼政党。

反对内塔尼亚胡的联盟尚未提名正式领导人，但前陆军总司令加迪·艾森科特被广泛认为是该联盟最有可能的总理候选人。

巴拉克说：“我们需要明确这一点。他基本上是独自参选。是内塔尼亚胡对抗反对派联盟。”

“想想看，”图马-苏利曼说道，他指出，在一位代表以色列巴勒斯坦公民的政党的重要领导人因其对加沙战争的言论被迫退出选举后，这种做法存在双重标准。“他一手促成了这样一种制度：阿拉伯裔议员萨米·阿布·谢哈德被禁止参选，而他自己，一个犯下战争罪行、带领国家进行种族灭绝的人，却可以参选。”

弗拉申贝格指出，在内塔尼亚胡的支持者看来，他“仍然是以色列唯一可能的领导人”。但对他的反对者而言，“他就是魔鬼。他是腐败的化身，要为10月7日之前和之后的一切负责。”

然而，这位分析人士指出，他的最终遗产可能还在未来，并引用了英国前首相玛格丽特·撒切尔的话，撒切尔曾将反对党的右倾视为她最大的遗产。

弗拉申贝格说：“内塔尼亚胡的政治遗产在于反对派。所有主要竞争者都是右翼、军国主义，而且归根结底都是种族主义者。这就是内塔尼亚胡的政治遗产。”