Whatever Netanyahu’s past achievements may have been, Israel today is confronting the decay of the system he built.
The problem is not only Netanyahu himself, but also the coalition that keeps him in power. A coalition for which political survival has become more important than the interests of the state. A governing model that, for years, did not solve the country’s key problems, but froze them in place in order to preserve power.
Today, Netanyahu and his system are too closely associated with:
the country’s internal rift, one of whose clearest manifestations was the judicial overhaul and the confrontation around it, to the point that labels like “Kaplanists” entered the public vocabulary;
the erosion of trust in state institutions through corruption, cronyism, and a politics of survival at any cost;
attacks on the state system itself: the delegitimization of judges and of key institutions of Israeli democracy, including the Attorney General, the State Comptroller, and the High Court of Justice;
the failure of the policy of “containment,” which became one of the factors behind the October 7 catastrophe;
the refusal to allow a truly independent commission of inquiry into October 7;
the failure to bring the Gaza policy vis-à-vis Hamas to a decisive conclusion;
the Iran policy, which I consider a major strategic failure;
the inability to pass a fair conscription law;
the refusal to pursue the real integration of the ultra-Orthodox sector, neither through military service nor through education reform;
the subordination of state policy to coalition survival;
far too long a stay in power.
Outside Israel, this system is increasingly associated with a toxic perception of the country and with the image of a harshly expansionist and annexationist course.
And this course might at least be defensible if it were actually successful.
Instead, under Netanyahu and the system he built, Israel has received another round of internal division, death, destruction, economic damage, and growing hostility toward the country and toward Netanyahu himself beyond its borders.
That is why I believe that any real recovery of the country requires new politicians and an end to this model of rule.
Netanyahu must go. And the system he built must go with him.