Time to bring down the curtain on the Netanyahu show

On 8 May, 1972, four members of the Black September Palestinian terrorist group hijacked Sabena Flight 571, a commercial flight between Vienna and Tel Aviv. The terrorists held the hostages in the plane on the runway at Lod airport, threatening to blow the aircraft up unless hundreds of convicted Palestinian terrorists were freed. The Israeli government opted to launch an operation involving a team from the country’s elite special forces unit, Sayeret Matkal. The unit commander was Ehud Barak; one of the unit’s team leaders was Benjamin Netanyahu.  

Fast forward more than half a century, and Netanyahu, now Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister, addressed his country’s people on national television. Israel had just suffered what could be described as the largest geopolitical disaster in its history. US President Donald Trump has decided to jettison yet another ally.

The Memorandum of Understanding he has signed with Iran will, in the short term, provide the theocratic dictatorship with an immediate major economic boost, by allowing them to sell their oil. In the long term, it could see the United States lift all sanctions against the regime – and potentially leave Israel hamstrung in its continued attempts to counter Hezbollah in Lebanon.

You would not have heard any of this, though, in the speech the Israeli Prime Minister gave. No, all was milk and honey on planet Netanyahu. The Iranian regime’s nuclear capabilities had been dealt a severe blow, said the man who knows better than most that Tehran has repeatedly resuscitated its nuclear programme in response to a variety of setbacks.

The joint US-Israel operation had severely weakened Iran and its proxies in the region, said the leader who knows perfectly well that memorandum signed by the US includes $300 billion “for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran”. The only surprise in the speech was that a bolt of lightning did not descend from heaven to strike down the purveyor of such unmitigated horse-manure – although admittedly in Netanyahu’s case, if such a divine reaction was to occur it would have happened long since.

To be a successful politician in a democratic society, you don’t just need skill – you also need luck. You need to be willing to roll the dice, again and again, in the hope that you keep getting sixes. Eventually, however, everyone’s luck runs out.

Few politicians have gambled as significantly as Benjamin Netanyahu. Whether in regard to domestic coalitions, foreign hostility, or charges of financial wrongdoing, he has followed the exact same playbook. Seek to divide opponents, play for time for as long as you can, and above all else, show absolute confidence in your narrative of a situation.

To be a successful politician in a democratic society, you don’t just need skill – you also need luck. Eventually, however, everyone’s luck runs out

But for Israel’s most accomplished political tightrope-walker, the strands of hemp are fraying. The man who talked about how he had kept Israel safe was at the helm on 7 October, yet somehow, anything and everyone other than him seems to have been held responsible. Netanyahu was also the architect of a political plan that has ultimately proved ruinous – opting to forsake Israel’s traditional bipartisan focus in Washington to throw in his lot with Donald Trump.

The consequences of that decision are now obvious. With the Democratic party moving to an increasingly anti-Israel position, this has left the Israeli Prime Minister all but reliant on the goodwill of one of the most mercurial men on the planet. Netanyahu decided to use that goodwill to launch a throw of the geopolitical dice – knocking out the Iranian regime, Israel’s bête noire in the region.

Despite Israel and America’s total military superiority, Donald Trump has somehow contrived to lose the war he agreed to help start. Netanyahu is helplessly tied to a US President who has increasingly made it clear that he is souring on their relationship.

There is not much that links Benjamin Netanyahu to David Cameron, other than the fact they are/were both Prime Ministers of their respective countries. But somehow, when I look at Netanyahu now, I think back to what happened almost exactly a decade ago now, when Cameron announced his intention to resign as Prime Minister of the UK and leader of the Conservative party.

His time in office was marked by a series of gambles, albeit not of a military nature. In 2011, the United Kingdom held a referendum on the Alternative Vote, a compromise agreed to in exchange for the presence of the Liberal Democrats in a coalition government. The country voted no, as Cameron wanted. In 2014, Scotland was able to hold a legally binding referendum on Independence. The country voted no, as Cameron wanted. And then in 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum on whether to remain in the EU or to leave.

The country voted no, as Cameron very much did not want. Less than a month later, he was gone as Prime Minister. He had rolled the dice one too many times.

Netanyahu will not follow a similar path of leaving with (relative) dignity. Like many politicians who have remained in power for too long, he has come to firmly believe the words apocryphally attributed to Louis XIV – “L’État, c’est moi”.

Last month, however, Hungarian voters turfed out another longstanding leader, Viktor Orban -– perhaps unsurprisingly, a good friend of Netanyahu – who had sought to mould a democratic state into his own image. Within the next few months, Israeli voters will have the opportunity to do the same to Bibi.

While he has defied his critics before, surely the time has come to raise the lights and lower the curtain on the Netanyahu show.