OPINIONLikud in a state of flux: Bibi’s political survival and questions he cannot escape
Benjamin Netanyahu has spent much of his political career persuading Israelis that he alone stands between them and annihilation. The irony is that the man who has made national security the central justification for his extraordinary longevity in office presided over the most devastating security failure in Israel’s history. Three years after October 7, 2023, the country still awaits an independent state commission capable of establishing precisely how that catastrophe occurred, who ignored the warnings and who must accept responsibility.
For a politician who has survived scandals, indictments, coalition rebellions and successive elections, accountability remains the one adversary that cannot be dispatched with an air strike. Israel’s October 27 election has brought this contradiction into sharper focus. The preliminary results have dealt Netanyahu a setback, but they have not delivered a decisive defeat.
His Likud remains competitive, the opposition has no effortless route to a majority, and Arab-led parties could determine who forms the next government. The prospect of another election cannot be ruled out either. Netanyahu understands the advantages of political exhaustion. If the public can be persuaded that no alternative government is viable, the incumbent can present his own survival as a national necessity.
Yet the arithmetic of parliamentary seats is only part of the story. Netanyahu faces three corruption cases involving allegations of gifts and benefits, dealings with a newspaper publisher, and regulatory favours allegedly exchanged for favourable media coverage. Obviously, he has denied wrongdoing, but his trial has continued, and he has sought a presidential pardon.
Losing office would not make him guilty, nor would it automatically send him to prison. It could, however, diminish his ability to use the demands of the premiership as a reason for postponing proceedings and would deprive him of some of the political leverage he currently enjoys. The temptation to conflate these legal cases with October 7 must be resisted, but so must the opposite temptation to pretend that the two are politically unrelated.
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A national emergency can alter the public agenda, defer questions of accountability and allow a leader to wrap his political fortunes in the national flag. Netanyahu has had every incentive to insist that the country cannot afford a change of leadership in wartime. His critics have argued that his political survival and the continuation of the war have become entangled and that allegation deserves examination, not automatic acceptance.
The central question is why Israel has been denied a fully independent investigation into October 7. Netanyahu has resisted a statutory state commission, arguing that a panel appointed through the judiciary would be biased against his government. Critics see the proposed alternative, with politicians controlling the inquiry’s composition and mandate, as an arrangement in which those under investigation would effectively supervise their own examination, and that distinction is not trivial.
A state commission can compel witnesses and make findings about personal responsibility. A politically managed inquiry risks becoming an exercise in allocating blame while protecting those who control the process. Recent reporting has made the need for such an inquiry even more pressing. Axios reported allegations of advance warnings from the UAE, while Netanyahu has denied receiving a warning from the Emirati president about an impending Hamas attack. The UAE has said the two governments share relevant intelligence, without directly confirming the alleged conversation. The critical question is not whether a warning existed in some general form, but what information reached Netanyahu, when he received it, what he understood and whether he passed it on to those responsible for Israel’s security.
The Times of Israel also reported allegations of an attempt to alter an official record of a telephone conversation on the morning of October 7. These allegations require verification and must not be treated as established proof of a conspiracy, but the chronology of communications that morning is precisely the sort of matter an independent commission must be able to examine without political interference. If the records are accurate, they should withstand scrutiny. If they are incomplete or have been manipulated, the public has a right to know why.
None of this establishes that Netanyahu knew the specific Hamas operation was imminent and deliberately allowed it to proceed. The distinction between catastrophic negligence, institutional failure and deliberate complicity is fundamental. The purpose of an inquiry is to establish which, if any, of these descriptions is supported by evidence, not to substitute suspicion for proof. But refusing to permit an authoritative examination only deepens suspicion that the government has something to fear from one.
The September 30 Flydubai FZ1073 cockpit attack raises a different set of questions, although the same principle of accountability applies. The UAE has described an attempted terrorist attack after an Omani co-pilot allegedly assaulted the captain and attempted to bring down the aircraft. Saudi Arabia has opened an aviation-safety investigation alongside the UAE’s criminal proceedings. The published accounts raise questions about security arrangements, how warnings were handled, and whether anyone else was involved. The incident also became politically useful to Netanyahu, who could invoke the danger facing Israeli citizens and present himself as the indispensable guarantor of their security.
That political advantage is observable; it is not evidence that he had any role in the attack. Nevertheless, if Israeli authorities possessed relevant intelligence before the incident, or if failures in the security arrangements were concealed, an independent examination should establish what happened. Netanyahu’s departure might make such scrutiny easier, but neither the UAE’s investigation nor the release of evidence from other jurisdictions is automatically under his successor's control.
The stakes extend beyond Israel. A government led by Gadi Eisenkot or another opposition figure might be less dependent on the far right and more receptive to negotiations over Gaza, humanitarian access and post-war governance. Yet a change of prime minister would not necessarily produce a change in Israel’s strategic posture towards Iran, Hezbollah or Syria. Much of the Israeli political establishment shares the view that these are serious security threats.
The important question is whether a new government would be prepared to reconsider the conduct of military operations, not merely the identity of the person authorising them. Washington adds another uncertainty. The November 3 US midterms could alter congressional control and intensify scrutiny of the Trump administration’s military commitments.
A Democratic-controlled Congress could complicate funding decisions and subject the conduct of the Iran war to more searching oversight, although it could not simply assume the president’s foreign-policy powers. A different Israeli government, facing a more critical Congress, might have to negotiate a different relationship with its principal ally. These are plausible pressures, not guarantees of regional peace.
What connects these developments is not a proven grand conspiracy, but a contest over accountability. Netanyahu’s opponents must demonstrate that they can govern without compromising Israel’s security. Arab-led parties must decide whether their parliamentary leverage can secure meaningful commitments on Gaza and the rights of Arab citizens.
The courts must continue to determine the corruption cases independently. And any commission investigating October 7 must be free to examine the prime minister, the intelligence services, the military and the political assumptions that left Israel disastrously unprepared. Democracy is not measured by how many times a politician survives an election, but by whether institutions can investigate that politician without fear, whether evidence can be disclosed without partisan filtering, and whether the public can distinguish a national interest from the personal interests of those claiming to represent it.
Netanyahu may yet survive this election through coalition arithmetic or another trip to the polls. But if he leaves office, the opportunity to establish the truth about October 7 must not be squandered on settling political scores. The same applies to Flydubai and every other unresolved security failure, as there is no virtue in replacing one partisan narrative with another.
The man who has repeatedly insisted that Israel needs him to remain safe may finally have to answer a simpler question. What happened on his watch, what did he know, and why has the country been denied a definitive account? Until those questions are answered, every declaration of victory, every invocation of national security and every demand for public trust will carry the same uncomfortable qualification. The state may have survived its enemies, but its leaders have yet to demonstrate that they can survive an honest investigation.
The author is a National Award winner for Best Narration and an independent political analyst. Views expressed are personal.