LONDON: Love him or hate him, Benjamin Netanyahu is an extraordinary politician. Known as Bibi to his friends and enemies alike, Netanyahu is Israel’s longest serving prime minister who has survived crisis after crisis. His nickname “King Bibi” reflects his long political reign, charismatic authority, and central role in shaping Israel’s domestic and foreign policy.
Although known for the ability to survive repeated political crises, however, many are beginning to believe that his latest announcement to expand the war against Hamas in Gaza is sheer madness and will bring Bibi’s reign to a crashing end. Not only that, as head of the most rightwing, most Zionist government the country has ever seen, Bibi could well go down in history as the one who brought about the beginning of Israel’s demise.
It’s all to do with his pursuit of policies and political positions which have had devastating impacts on Palestinian lives. Critics, including many human rights organisations, accuse him of pursuing policies that amount to apartheid or collective punishment, particularly in Gaza and the West Bank. Since he first became Israel’s youngest prime minister in 1996 at the age of 46, Benjamin Netanyahu has done nothing to solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
In fact, by repeatedly rejecting Palestinian sovereignty and insisting on Israeli control over all disputed territory, King Bibi has effectively killed the political feasibility of the two-state solution under his tenure. This stance places him at odds with much of the international community and with those, including many Israelis, who continue to hope for a diplomatic solution to Israel’s problems. Palestinians have lived in the region historically known as Palestine for thousands of years, long before the modern IsraeliPalestinian conflict in which Netanyahu is a major player.
On Netanyahu’s watch, they have been side-lined and no Palestinian state has been allowed to take shape. Take his management of the growing settlement expansion in the West Bank, for example, an area crucial for the two-state solution. There are now more than 700,000 Israeli settlers living in some 160 settlements in the West bank, strategically placed to break up Palestinian population centres. Under Netanyahu, the West Bank has become a patchwork of enclaves, with Israel controlling key roads, borders and access points, making a sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state unworkable.
A 2025 map shows that 44.5 percent of the West Bank is effectively under Israeli control via settlements or behind the separation wall. With the approval of Netanyahu, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on Thursday plans to build yet another 3,000 new homes in the occupied West Bank which, he said, would “bury the idea of a Palestinian State”. “This is Zionism at its best – building, settling and strengthening our sovereignty in the Land of Israel,” he claimed. But it’s the issue of Gaza that will be the undoing of Benjamin Netanyahu. Without question, the events on 7 October 2023 were a major shock for Israeli Jews.
The terrorist group Hamas not only killed more than 1200 innocent Israelis, mostly young people in the prime of their lives, but took 251 hostages into Gaza. According to various sources, 58 currently remain in captivity but only 20 are believed to be alive. Shortly after the massacre, a survey by the Lazar Institute found that nearly 80 percent of Israelis held Netanyahu responsible for the failure to prevent the attack, with only about 8 percent absolving him. An internal military investigation released in February this year concluded that the army “misjudged Hamas’ intentions, underestimated its strength and was categorically unprepared”.
Both the head of military intelligence and army chief of staff resigned, publicly acknowledging that Israel failed its mission to provide warning and protection, but Netanyahu has not personally accepted any blame. Pushing the can down the road, he repeatedly stated that an investigation would follow “after the war”, and has constantly avoided any direct apologies or expressions of responsibility. A civilian commission of enquiry later criticized Israel’s decision makers, including Benjamin Netanyahu, for complacency and lack of proper strategy.
But Bibi always steers clear of any blame for his actions – it’s in his DNA. As if his failures two years ago weren’t enough, many see Netanyahu’s decision to increase the horrors in Gaza by attacking Gaza City itself, where a million Palestinians are seeking refuge, as sheer madness. Netanyahu argues that Hamas retains significant military control in Gaza and remains a central threat to Israel. He asserts that only by taking over Gaza City, which he describes as the “last true fortress of Hamas”, can Israel collapse Hamas’ power and end the war.
Capturing the city, he insists, will “finish the job” and complete the defeat of Israel’s mortal enemy. He also links the military takeover directly to freeing the remaining hostages, a point that terrifies the families of the hostages. If the terrorists sense defeat, they argue, “they will simply murder our loved-ones and run for their lives”. Israel’s push to take Gaza City has also drawn severe international condemnation as it will simply worsen the unbelievably dire conditions of the Palestinians, who are suffering starvation and mass displacement – not to mention adding to the massive civilian casualties, currently numbering more than 60,000 since the war started.
A recent study by the Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which verified casualties from three independent sources, found that 70 percent of the Palestinians killed in residential buildings by Israeli bombs were women and children. This number is bound to escalate by Netanyahu’s decision to take Gaza City, although he maintains that civilians will be evacuated to designated safe zones with access to food, water and medical care.
Faced with endless images of emaciated and dying Palestinian children, Netanyahu dismisses claims of Israeli starvation tactics as a “global campaign of lies.” Neutral observers, however, are beginning to suspect that Netanyahu’s real aim is to forcibly remove Palestinians from Gaza and turn the Strip into part of “Greater Israel”, although he has repeatedly denied this as “not realistic.” Far-right ministers, such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar BenGvir, whose support is vital for Netanyahu to remain in post, have both voiced their wish to re-establish Jewish settlements in Gaza.
Smotrich has repeatedly declared Gaza to be “part of the Land of Israel”, stating that “without settlements there is no security.” Ben-Gvir agrees, arguing that the emigration of Palestinians from Gaza was both the best and “most ethical” solution. Israel’s minister of heritage, Amichai Eliyahu, has repeatedly called for “full occupation of Gaza” post-war and the rebuilding Israeli settlements there. Most recently, on 24 July 2025, amid famine and mounting humanitarian concerns, Eliyahu confirmed: “the government is rushing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out. All of Gaza will be Jewish.”
Back in January 2024, Daniella Weiss, leader of Israeli activist organisation Nachala, said that the group had organised six settlement groups comprising 700 families ready to move into Gaza “right now” when the opportunity arises. She was speaking at a conference titled “Preparing to Settle Gaza,” held near the Gaza border, attended by several of Netanyahu’s senior Cabinet ministers and a number of Likud members of the Knesset. While Netanyahu has distanced himself from both Weiss and Eliyahu, saying that their views do not represent the official position of the security cabinet, his far-right coalition partners continue to shift the “overton window” towards normalising such talk.
Many believe that Netanyahu’s stated goal of fully controlling Gaza will inevitably pave the way for Israeli settlement in the Strip. There is plenty of evidence of a growing section of the Israeli population preparing for the very real possibility that their dream of resettling Gaza will be realised. History shows that in the wake of Israeli military conquest, settlers have moved in to establish outposts. Gradually these outposts have become settlements as families have flooded in, largely driven by Zionist ideology. Few disagree that Israel is as divided now as at any time in its history and Netanyahu, a deeply divisive figure when Hamas attacked, is presiding over fault lines that have opened into chasms. To his rightwing Likud base, Benjamin Netanyahu remains “Bibi, King of Israel” as they have long serenaded him.
They need to be careful with that coronation, however, as Israel’s kings have a bad reputation. More than 2,500 years ago, the kings of the northern kingdom of Israel were mostly described in the biblical narrative as “evil”. Their cumulative failure led to the fall of northern Israel to Syria. Kings of Judah in the southern kingdom of Israel were hardly any better. According to the Bible they failed morally, religiously, and politically. In fact, their repeated failure led to political upheaval and the end of the Kingdom of Judea in 586 BCE. The question nowadays is – where will the madness of King Bibi lead Israel?
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.
