End of the road for Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving minister Politics News

Israeli competition politicians have formed a new government to oust Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longtime leader.

Two years after four parliamentary elections, opposition leader Yair Lapid, a former television MP, formed a coalition with former colonel leader Naftali Bennett and a far-right religious nationalist to demand the annexation of most of the occupied West Bank. .

On Sunday, the Knesset voted 60-59 to approve the new coalition government, ending Netanyahu’s 12-year term as prime minister.

Early years

Now being prosecuted for corruption, Netanyahu was Israel’s right-wing prime minister so far, and became the first Israeli-born politician to become a leader.

The son of a Polish “Revisionist Zionist,” Netanyahu has some roots in Spain.

Born in Jaffan in 1949, Netanyahu grew up in Jerusalem and attended high school in the United States.

His mother, Tzila Segal, was a Jew of Israeli descent and his father, Benzion Netanyahu, was a secular Jew from Poland.

His father changed his name from Benzion Mileikowsky to Benzion Netanyahu after settling in Palestine.

Netanyahu’s father was one of the original revisionist Zionists who believed he should exist on both sides of the Jordan River in Israel, rejecting commitments to the surrounding Arab states.

In 1967, Benjamin Netanyahu joined the Israeli army and soon became an elite commando and was a captain in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Rise to power

In 1982, Netanyahu was appointed deputy head of mission at the Israeli embassy in Washington. In 1984 he was appointed ambassador to the United Nations in Israel.

In 1988, Netanyahu was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister in the cabinet of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

When Likud rose to the post of right-wing party president in 1993, Netanyahu led the party to return to political power after failing in the 1992 election.

He held various positions in the Israeli Foreign Ministry until he won the 1996 elections. The prime minister lasted until 1999. Later, he also emerged victorious in the 2009, 2013 and 2015 elections.

Netanyahu lost Likud leadership to Ariel Sharon, but in 2005 the latter formed Kadima to regain his post after leaving Likud.

For critics like Yuval Diskin, a former head of Israel’s home intelligence organization, Netanyahu has an inflated sense of rights.

Diskin once said, “At stake within Netanyahu is, in my opinion, a mixture of ideology, that the prince of an elite ‘royal family’ in Jerusalem has a deep feeling, insecurity, and a deep fear of taking responsibility.”

For followers, he is a strong spokesman for Israel, ready to tell uncomfortable truths to the people and able to stand up against enemies.

‘Three nos’

Netanyahu had the mantra of “three nos”: no Palestinian state, no return to the Golan Heights to Syria, and no discussion about the future status of Jerusalem.

Despite opposing most peace agreements with the Palestinians, Netanyahu signed the Wye River Accords in 1998 with Yasser Arafat, then president of the Palestinian National Authority.

Sharon resigned as foreign minister in August 2005 against a plan to disband Gaza, which was part of Palestinian territory.

Jerusalem status

Netanyahu insisted on continuing to expand illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian lands.

“We will continue to build everywhere on the map of strategic interests in Jerusalem and Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election was welcomed by Netanyahu.

After eight wonderful years in the White House with US-Israel Barack Obama, the Trump-Netanyahu meeting in Washington, DC in early 2017 was intended to signal a “restoration” of relations between the two sides.

Later that year, Trump broke with decades of U.S. policy and announced that the U.S. would formally accept Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and begin the process of moving its embassy to the city.

Netanyahu is pleased with the decision, saying it is a “historic day” for Israel.

The delay in Joe Biden’s first phone call to Netanyahu after taking office sparked speculation that the US president was disrupting Netanyahu’s close ties to Trump.

But the 11-day Israeli attack on Gaza brought the two leaders together, as Biden showed a strong stance in favor of Netanyahu and his policies in an enclave that besieged more than 250 Palestinians killed by Israel in the latest Palestinian bombing, including at least 66 children.

Rhetoric against Iran

As prime minister, Netanyahu told the U.S. Congress that he was “running out of time” to deal with Iran.

“The deadline for achieving that goal is very close,” he said.

Netanyahu has said that Iran has an “existential threat” to Israel and has repeatedly threatened unilateral military action against Iran.

“As long as I am prime minister, Iran will not have an atomic bomb,” he said in 2013. “If there is no other way, Israel is ready to play [with force]”.

Corruption scandal

Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in lengthy cases involving the gifts of millions of friends and seeking regulatory favors from media moguls in exchange for favorable coverage.

Accusations against him have been a major issue in the country’s recent elections. Netanyahu has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty while the trial continues.

Coronavirus pandemic

Netanyahu, who has made Israel’s world-leading vaccine presentation a showcase for a two-year campaign in the country’s fourth national poll, has won a victory over COVID-19, making Israel a “nation of vaccines”.

About half of the population has been insulted at the rate of international praise for Netanyahu, but Israel is also demanding more from Palestinians in the occupied territories to receive vaccines.

Political opponents say he has mistreated the pandemic from the beginning, stressing the need for three national blockades and accusing the key members of his coalition of blinding insiders within the ultra-Orthodox community.