The Netanyahu Show Is Finally Fizzling Out
A rocket attack. John Bolton is fired. A surveillance law fails. Sheldon Adelson calls his wife “crazy.” And next week could be even worse.
More bad news?
Photographer: Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was speaking at a campaign event in Israel’s coastal city of Ashdod on Tuesday, the “code red” alarm – signifying incoming rockets from Gaza – went off. Netanyahu’s bodyguards hustled him off the stage, while in the skies, the Iron Dome missile-defense system destroyed the incoming rockets. Like most of the thousands of missiles Hamas has fired at Israel over the years, these caused no damage. For many Israelis, though, the image of the prime minister fleeing incoming Hamas fire was a metaphor for his political condition.
In much of the West, Netanyahu is perceived as a tough guy, cozying up to strongmen in European capitals and to President Donald Trump in Washington, but many Israelis understand there is a good deal of bluster behind this image. Though he is now unwilling to discuss a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, Netanyahu has also done little to preclude it; he has authorized far less settlement construction than prime ministers who preceded him. Now Israel’s longest-serving PM, Netanyahu has also been very reticent to go to war. Aside from the 2014 Gaza war with Hamas, Netanyahu has never taken Israel into major conflict. For that, he is both lauded and rebuked; Israelis admire him for keeping their casualties down, but residents of communities near the Gaza border lambaste him for having done nothing to improve their quality of life.