Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing perhaps the most uncertain moment of his political career. He knows that. His allies know this. And his rivals — both within his own coalition and across Israel’s political spectrum — are preparing to take advantage of his growing weakness.
Former Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon, who also served as deputy prime minister between 2007 and 2009, is among the latest Israeli political figures to join a growing chorus of criticism of Netanyahu.
“In the end result,” said Ramon in an interview with Radio Galey, cited from the Israeli newspaper Srugim, “we didn’t win.” He then broke down that failure in blunt terms: “We didn’t win Lebanonwe didn’t win in Iran and we didn’t win against Hamas.”
Another prominent critic is former Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot, who they joined Netanyahu’s emergency war government after the events of October 7, 2023, before resigning with Benny Gantz in June 2024.
Beyond Netanyahu’s charge of failing to defend Israel on October 7, Eisenkot EVIDENCE that the prime minister has effectively handed over Israel’s political decision-making to the American president Donald Trumpstrategically weakening Israel.
Ironically, Netanyahu’s coalition partners have often been even more opportunistic than the opposition.
Since the formation of the current coalition the government on December 29, 2022 – widely considered to be the the right Government in Israel’s history – figures such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have repeatedly used Netanyahu’s political vulnerability to expand their influence.
Whenever Netanyahu needed political support to stay in power, they demanded concessions in return.
For Israel’s far-right extremists, Netanyahu’s inability to secure decisive strategic victories has often translated into opportunities to advance their agendas. Every obstacle on the battlefield became an opening for more expansion of settlementstougher measures against Palestiniansand deeper entrenchment of extremist policies.
Unable to deliver “victory”, Netanyahu turned the perpetual war into a political strategy in its own right. The result was one genocidal war IN Gazawidespread destruction in Lebanon and a dangerous confrontation with Iran that has repeatedly brought the region to the brink of wider catastrophe.
For a while, this formula proved politically stable. Netanyahu successfully registered unshakable US support to keep the fire of war burning. at the same time, failure of Europe and much of the international community to hold a wanted war criminal accountable gave him the political space he needed to continue his bloody calculations.
However, this formula may be close to its limits. While this possibility may seem encouraging, it comes with a serious caveat. If Netanyahu can no longer afford the wars that have sustained his political life for nearly three years, he may escalate where resistance is weakest: the occupied West Bank.
As for Iran, there is a growing recognition that the current confrontation is unsustainable indefinitely and that some form of agreement will eventually emerge. Likewise, regardless of whether Lebanon is formally included in any future agreement, Israel’s ambition to permanently occupy parts of Lebanese territory remains unsustainable.
Historically, when Israel fails to secure a strategic breakthrough on one front, it seeks compensation on another—usually where Palestinians are most vulnerable and international scrutiny is weakest.
As the Israeli elections approach, it is therefore reasonable to fear their further escalation genocide IN Gazataking the death toll and level of destruction to new heights.
According to Gaza health authorities, about 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire agreement was announced in October, bringing everyone number of deaths Israel’s genocide in Gaza against 73,000 Palestinians.
Although Israel’s war has already failed to break Palestinian resilience, the broader objective remains unchanged: ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the transformation of the strip into a space that can no longer support Palestinian life.
The West Coast, however, presents a different challenge.
There, Israel faces a fragmented political landscape and a Palestinian Authority that REFUSED to develop an effective strategy for confronting the accelerating Israeli violence, ethnic cleansinghousing demolitions, land confiscation and the relentless expansion of illegal settlements.
This weakness has enabled Israel to move from discussing annexation to putting it into practice. The strategy rests on two interrelated pillars: extreme violence and displacement on the one hand, and rapid settlement expansion on the other.
According to one Oxfam INTERNATIONAL LAW STUDY published on June 12, Israel has killed 1,244 Palestinians, including 268 the childrenin the occupied West Bank since 2023—more than the total number killed in the previous 17 years combined.
This bloodshed has been accompanied by large-scale displacement that has already uprooted some 46,000 Palestinians, many of them from refugee camps and vulnerable communities across the northern West Bank.
A Amnesty International REPORT published on June 10 documented the total or partial displacement of at least 117 Palestinian Bedouin and pastoral communities between January 2023 and April 2026.
It is expected that violence, displacement, settlement expansion and land confiscation are not isolated developments, but components of a coherent political project. In September 2025, Smotrich opened proposed annexation of 82% of the occupied West Bank. What was once presented as a political vision is now constantly being translated into facts on the ground.
The Netanyahu era may be drawing to a close, but before this bloody political chapter closes, many more Palestinians may be forced to bear the cost.
Arab and Muslim countries, along with their allies in the international community, should not wait for Israel to launch a much larger attack in the West Bank before responding. The matter requires urgent attention and immediate action.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books, including: These Chains Will Break: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Challenge in Israeli Prisons (2019), My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: The Untold Story of Gaza (2010) and The Second Palestinian Intifada: A People’s Chronicle20. He is a non-resident senior scholar at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
