As Israel approaches its October 27 polls, the country's longest-serving prime minister is once again seeking re-election amidst a deeply divided political landscape. To his supporters, he is known as "King Bibi," while his opponents label him the king of security failures and corruption, according to Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera reports that Benjamin Netanyahu entered Israel's central political stage in the early 1990s by fueling anger at possible peace deals with the Palestinians and Syria. Israeli political leaders have accused him of leading incitement that motivated the 1995 assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was leading negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, by an ultranationalist Israeli, as noted by Al Jazeera. Netanyahu had led rallies in which participants depicted Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform and held signs of him in the crosshairs of a gun, while others shouted "traitor," according to the report. Al Jazeera states that the Likud Party leader denies any responsibility, though former security officials have said they warned Netanyahu before the assassination and asked him to dial down his rhetoric, only for him to refuse.
Background
In 1996, Netanyahu's populist tactics succeeded at the ballot box, making him Israel's youngest prime minister, according to Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera notes that his transactional leadership style gave prominence to extreme-right and religious parties that are now an indispensable part of his right-wing alliance. Under his tenure, religious courts have expanded powers, including over civil and business disputes, and state institutions accommodate religious agendas while allocating record levels of funding to ultra-Orthodox schools and institutions, Al Jazeera reports. Furthermore, Al Jazeera states that Netanyahu inscribed his political ideology into law, specifically regarding the identity of the state and the status of Palestinian citizens of Israel. In 2018, the Knesset passed the Nation-State Basic Law, which states that Israel is the exclusive state of the Jewish people and makes advancing illegal settlements a national priority, according to Al Jazeera. Human rights organisations petitioned the High Court to stop the legislation, but the petition was rejected, and international experts and rights groups cite this law among others, Al Jazeera reports.
Why it matters
For observers and readers in Pakistan, developments regarding political institutional shifts, the codification of nationalist ideologies into basic laws, and the growing influence of religious parties in governance offer a window into complex legislative and social transformations abroad. As analysed by Al Jazeera, the long-term domestic legacy of a polarising leader often includes the entrenchment of a right-wing, militaristic opposition and lasting structural changes to state identity.