For Netanyahu, Israel’s Fight With Hamas Is Going Just Fine

Two weeks ago, he was about to lose his job. Now, he’s stronger than ever.

There’s at least one person between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River for whom gruesome recent events have worked out just fine: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Two weeks ago, while tensions were already growing over the planned eviction of six families from a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem but before they were exacerbated by police raiding the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israel’s longest-serving leader was in a jam. The inconclusive results of the country’s fourth election in two years had left him unable to form a government. His rivals were on the verge of forming an unlikely right-center-left-Islamist coalition for the specific purpose of removing him from power.

Those talks collapsed last week when right-wing kingmaker Naftali Bennett pulled out, saying that the “emergency situation” in the country required a military response, something he thought would be impossible in a government including the Arab party Ra’am. A potential breakthrough for Jewish-Arab political cooperation was snuffed out as Jews and Arabs fought in the streets.

Netanyahu’s rivals have stopped short of blaming him for creating the crisis—most put the blame on Hamas, which, enmeshed in its own internal political struggle, began firing rockets at Israeli cities from Gaza—but at the very least, it has been a lifeline for the prime minister.

From a leader who recently looked on the verge of removal from office (and possibly jailtime given the wide range of corruption charges he was facing), Netanyahu now looks like one with few meaningful constraints on his power. Some of the Israeli government’s recent actions, from the storming of Al-Aqsa during Ramadan to the bombing of the AP’s office in Gaza, almost have a deliberately provocative, trolling quality, as if Netanyahu is daring his critics to be outraged.

The crisis has mostly neutralized the prime minister’s domestic opposition. Most Arab governments have condemned Israel, in line with public sentiment, but a split has emerged, as the governments that signed on to the Donald Trump–sponsored “Abraham Accords” with Israel last year have been more muted in their response.