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For the previous 10 months, Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to apologize for leaving Israel susceptible to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist assault. After the deaths of 1,200 folks and the kidnapping of lots of extra, a traumatized Israeli public heard abject admissions of accountability from the heads of the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, the nation’s home safety service, however none from Netanyahu, who had been Prime Minister for nearly a 12 months when the assault occurred, and had presided over a greater than 10-year technique of tacit acceptance of Hamas rule in Gaza. His solely apology was for a social media publish blaming his personal safety chiefs for failing to foil the assault. So, early in a 66-minute dialog with TIME on Aug. 4 within the Prime Minister’s workplace in Jerusalem, the query is, Would he apologize?
“Apologize?” he asks again. “Of course, after all. I’m sorry, deeply, that one thing like this occurred. And you at all times look again and also you say, Could now we have carried out issues that may have prevented it?”
For Netanyahu, who first occupied the dowdy Kaplan Street workplaces in 1996, it’s a fraught query. Through a mixture of electoral vicissitudes, sweeping regional adjustments, and his personal political items, his virtually 17-year cumulative tenure is longer than that of anybody else who has led Israel, a rustic solely two years older than he’s. Over that span, Netanyahu’s political endurance has been constructed round one constant argument: that he’s the one chief who can guarantee Israel’s security.
But within the wake of the worst slaughter of Jews for the reason that Holocaust, with greater than 40,000 Gazans dead within the ensuing battle, Israel underneath Netanyahu isn’t blessed with peace however besieged by warfare. As we communicate, the nation is on edge for an anticipated aerial assault from Iran, the second in 4 months. Shops are shuttered, and pedestrians keep inside sprinting distance of bomb shelters. The combating is ongoing in Gaza, with greater than 100 hostages nonetheless held by Hamas. Much to the frustration of the Biden Administration, Netanyahu nonetheless has not articulated a reputable plan to finish the warfare or a imaginative and prescient for the way the Israelis and the Palestinians can peacefully coexist. Instead, he’s bracing for escalating battle on much more fronts: within the north with Hezbollah in Lebanon; within the Gulf with the Houthis in Yemen; and most of all, with Israel’s nemesis Iran. “We’re going through not merely Hamas,” Netanyahu says. “We’re going through a full-fledged Iranian axis, and we perceive that now we have to prepare ourselves for broader protection.”
The story of how Israel arrived at this precarious second is entwined with Netanyahu’s private ambitions and vulnerabilities. In the months earlier than Oct. 7, Israeli society was sundered by his assist of right-wing laws diminishing the facility of the Supreme Court. The collective trauma of the Hamas assault could have introduced Jewish Israelis collectively, however deepened doubts about their Prime Minister, with 72% saying he ought to resign, both now or after the warfare, in accordance with a July ballot for Israel’s most watched tv station. Abroad, the toll of the Gaza warfare may be tallied in Israel’s rising isolation: arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant sought by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for alleged warfare crimes; American school campuses convulsed by anti-Israel protests, the biggest of their form since Vietnam; antisemitism rising across the globe.
On his first journey abroad for the reason that warfare’s outbreak, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on July 25 in hopes of reinforcing his nation’s most important alliance. But behind the standing ovations, the recommendation from each ends of the political spectrum was unanimous: President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former President Donald Trump all stated it was time to finish the warfare in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s response? Two days after arriving residence, and not using a heads-up to the White House, a bomb virtually definitely planted by Israel killed Hamas’ most distinguished negotiator in a closely guarded authorities visitor home in Tehran. With each passing week, critics elevate additional alarms that Netanyahu is drawing out the Gaza marketing campaign for private political causes, arguing {that a} deal for a everlasting cease-fire that may deliver residence the remaining hostages would additionally open the door to elections that would lead to his elimination from workplace. Biden himself informed TIME on May 28 that there was “each purpose to attract that conclusion,” and in Israel, many do. “Netanyahu is targeted on his longevity in energy greater than the pursuits of the Israeli folks or the State of Israel,” says former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who for 4 years served as his Defense Minister. “It will take half a era to restore the harm that Netanyahu has brought about within the final 12 months.”
Read More: Inside the Israel-Hamas Information War
A defiant Netanyahu, 74, calls these expenses a “canard.” He insists the purpose in Gaza have to be a victory so decisive that when the combating stops, Hamas could make no declare to control in Palestinian territories or pose a risk to Israel. Otherwise, he argues, it would solely condemn his nation to a way forward for extra massacres by the hands of enemies who wish to remove the world’s solely Jewish state. With the battle increasing, Netanyahu says he’s puncturing the arrogance of each different factor of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” a community of nonstate actors all through the Middle East with a collective arsenal of rockets educated on Israel.
If the warfare in Gaza widens right into a regional battle, the results for Israel and the world can be dangerously unpredictable. The U.S. and the West threat being dragged into one other Middle East quagmire. Israelis more and more fear that the warfare supposedly launched to avoid wasting Israel will imperil it. Among their most profound fears is that the cycle of violence and the notion it shapes of Israel for the following era will trigger lasting harm to its survival and its soul.
For Netanyahu, who says he’s waging an existential warfare, it’s a threat he acknowledges, however one he’s keen to take. “Being destroyed has larger implications about Israel’s safety,” he says. “I’d somewhat have unhealthy press than a very good obituary.”
Earlier this 12 months, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Tel Aviv to fulfill Israeli officers within the Kirya, the towering workplace advanced from which the Prime Minister and his Cabinet had been conducting the warfare. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza had already brought about an estimated 30,000 deaths, a rely by the Hamas-led Health Ministry that doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians, however is accepted by the U.N. and the White House. Nearly 2 million Palestinians had been displaced. It was a humanitarian disaster inflaming the world, and Blinken’s message to Netanyahu was easy: Wind down the warfare, you will have achieved your goal, Hamas can now not perform one other Oct. 7.
“That’s not our goal,” Netanyahu replied, in accordance with a supply acquainted with the alternate. “Our goal is to fully destroy Hamas’ army and governing capabilities.” The bigger, extra important purpose, Netanyahu argued, was restoring Israel’s precept of deterrence. The value of Oct. 7 needed to be sufficiently excessive for Hamas that every other energy contemplating an assault on Israel would worry comparable destruction. While Israel faces a cynical enemy that endangers its personal folks to delegitimize the Jewish state, the worth of that full-throttle strategy was already evident: the civilian dying toll was mounting, Palestinians struggled to entry primary well being care, and there was a scarcity of meals and water. The calamity spawned accusations of a disproportionate counterattack. “This is collective punishment,” says Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University professor who labored on Palestinian peace negotiations within the Nineties. “You don’t punish civilians for what Hamas did.”
Netanyahu dismisses these allegations out of hand. “We’ve gone out of our technique to allow humanitarian help for the reason that starting of the warfare,” he says, citing Israel’s supply of assist by means of meals vehicles and air drops.
To some extent, Netanyahu has been getting ready to battle this warfare his total grownup life. His political profession started as a telegenic diplomat explaining Israel’s positions on U.S. tv throughout Iran’s takeover of the U.S. embassy in 1979, and he was elected Prime Minister thrice pitching himself as “Mr. Security.” That the worst terrorist assault in Israel’s historical past occurred on his watch was a deep wound, forcing a reckoning in Israel over the strategic coverage choices he had championed for many years.
The first was permitting Qatar to ship funds into the Gaza Strip. Hamas had come to energy first by the poll field (in 2006 elections promoted by U.S. President George W. Bush) and a 12 months later by power of arms, amid factional combating. Israel first responded by implementing a blockade on the enclave. But underneath a coverage embraced over the previous 10 years by Netanyahu, billions in Qatari money was allowed into Gaza. The infrastructure it financed included many miles of tunnels.
“Hamas wore two hats. It wore a terrorist hat and it wore a governance hat after 2007,” says Michael Oren, Netanyahu’s ambassador to Washington from 2009 to 2013. “We thought that we might incentivize Hamas to put on the governance hat by means of massive infusions of Qatari money and by permitting Palestinian employees into Israel. Give Hamas one thing to lose. That was the thought. But it was flawed.”
Others noticed a extra cynical technique, to deepen divisions between Palestinians within the West Bank and Gaza, and undermine the prospects for a unified Palestinian state. “He noticed Hamas as an asset and the [West Bank–based] Palestinian Authority as a legal responsibility,” says Barak. “As lengthy as he can maintain Hamas alive and kicking and being a risk to Israel, he can simply shield himself towards calls for from America and from the remainder of the world who argued that Israel ought to search for a technique to obtain a breakthrough with the Palestinians.”
Netanyahu reportedly stated as a lot at a Likud Party assembly in 2019, in accordance with the Israeli media, however he denies it. Rather, he tells TIME, his approval of Qatari money infusions was humanitarian: “We wished to guarantee that Gaza has a functioning civilian administration to keep away from humanitarian collapse,” he says. Moreover, he claims, the cash didn’t kind the idea of Hamas’ eventual risk to Israel. “The essential concern was the switch of weapons and ammunition from the Sinai into Gaza,” he says. His major mistake, he says, was acceding to his Security Cabinet’s reluctance to wage full-on warfare. “Oct. 7 confirmed that those that stated that Hamas was deterred had been flawed,” he says through the Aug. 4 interview. “If something, I didn’t problem sufficient the idea that was frequent to all the safety businesses.”
Instead, Israel maintained a coverage referred to as mowing the grass—periodic combating to degrade Hamas’ army functionality and deter its need to assault Israel. The 2014 Gaza warfare, throughout which Hamas despatched forces into Israel by way of tunnels, lasted 51 days. Early in that spherical, senior Israeli officers say, Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet introduced him with a plan to destroy Hamas that estimated the price in deaths: roughly 10,000 Gazan civilians and almost 500 Israeli troopers. “There was no home assist for such an motion,” says Netanyahu. “There was definitely no worldwide assist for such an motion—and also you want each.”
While Hamas was rising stronger in secret, Israel was making a spectacle of its personal division. In January 2023, after Netanyahu returned to energy for the third time with a coalition that included far-right events beforehand thought of too excessive to control, he backed a radical invoice to weaken the judiciary. The plan triggered an immense backlash, with tens of 1000’s of Israelis protesting each weekend. “You are weakening us, and our enemy goes to see it and we’re going to pay the worth,” former Minister of Defense Benny Gantz warned Netanyahu.
Netanyahu blames the protesters, 1000’s of whom declared they wouldn’t serve within the army of an Israel with a diminished democratic basis. “The refusal to serve due to an inner political debate—I feel that, if something, that had an impact,” he says.
Amid this tumult, Hamas had been planning to infiltrate Israel by land, air, and sea, and never only for a one-off assault. The plan on Oct. 7 was to safe the south of Israel and hold shifting farther into the north, in accordance with two senior Israeli sources who’ve reviewed Hamas documentation found in Gaza. “This was not a plan to wound Israel,” says one supply who reviewed the paperwork. “It was deliberate to be step one within the operation to destroy Israel totally.”
Israel’s invasion of Gaza started on Oct. 27, when Netanyahu launched a full-scale floor operation with aerial strikes. The offensive got here with a chilly calculation; as a result of Hamas deliberately embeds its army infrastructure in densely populated areas, the assaults would inevitably inflict wide-scale civilian casualties. For an Israeli public nonetheless reeling from Oct. 7, their deaths grew to become a tragic however essential value to guard the nation-state established after the Holocaust to offer a protected haven for Jews of their ancestral homeland. A Pew ballot in May confirmed fewer than 20% of Israelis thought the nation’s army went “too far.” The press right here seldom reveals photographs of civilian deaths. In our interview, Netanyahu says the IDF’s “finest estimate” is that the ratio of civilian deaths to army is 1 to 1—terribly low for city fight. (The U.N. has stated that civilians normally account for 90% of casualties in warfare.)
The hostages stay the main focus of home consideration. In November, Israel and Hamas reached a brief cease-fire to alternate 105 of them for 240 Palestinian prisoners. When combating resumed every week later, the humanitarian disaster more and more grew to become the worldwide focus. Only underneath intense strain from the Biden Administration did Netanyahu permit extra assist into the Strip. When he ready to push into the southern Gaza metropolis of Rafah, the final refuge each for displaced civilians and Hamas’ remaining battalions, Netanyahu additionally discovered himself up towards the American President who had flown in after Oct. 7 to publicly embrace him.
Read More: The Families of Israelis Held Hostage by Hamas Speak Out
Israel appeared extra internationally remoted than ever earlier than. Most wounding to Netanyahu was a March cowl of the Economist, which he learn rising up within the States, headlined “Israel alone.” That, it seems, was exaggerated. A couple of weeks later, on April 14, Iran for the primary time launched 300 missiles towards Israel, a retaliation for its assault on a diplomatic facility in Damascus. Under Biden’s stewardship, the American, British, French, and Arab forces all rushed to Israel’s protection.
But two issues may be true without delay. A authorities anxious to stop a full-bore regional conflagration may scramble jets to avoid wasting Israeli lives whereas additionally holding grave reservations about what Israel was doing in Gaza. The warfare had been occurring for six months, and Biden wished Netanyahu to just accept a cease-fire-for-hostage deal that may finish it. To Biden’s frustration, Netanyahu resisted. He wished solely a brief pause within the combating upon the return of the hostages. An extended respite for Hamas stood to price Netanyahu the assist of his far-right governing companions, tanking his fragile coalition. “He’s risking his authorities in having a cope with Hamas,” says a senior Israeli official. “Bibi can have a hostage deal solely when it fits him politically.”
This was the backdrop for Netanyahu’s first journey overseas since Oct. 7, to deal with a joint session of Congress in Washington. The speech was at first opposed by Biden and Democratic congressional management, who knew it might exacerbate party tensions over the Administration’s assist for the warfare. Nearly 130 Democrats skipped it, together with Harris, who as Vice President would historically preside over the handle.
A go to supposed to showcase solidarity with Israel’s most important ally as an alternative underscored what was for Israel a rising partisan divide. In current years, Democratic voters have grown much less supportive of Israel and extra sympathetic towards Palestinians, in accordance with Gallup. The Gaza warfare had solely intensified the pattern.
Netanyahu says that’s not his fault. “I don’t assume that the a lot reported erosion of assist amongst some quarters of the American public is said to Israel,” he says. “It’s extra associated to America.” He cites a Harvard-Harris survey that in January discovered that 80% of respondents supported Israel whereas 20% supported Hamas—a big chunk of assist for a terrorist group. “There’s an issue that America has,” Netanyahu says. “It’s not an issue that Israel has.”
The partisan divide on show throughout his journey supplied the canny Israeli Premier a possibility. After the speech he traveled to Trump’s Mediterranean-style Palm Beach mansion to restore his relationship with the billionaire, who remained offended at Netanyahu for backing out of a joint strike on a prime Iranian in January 2020, and for congratulating Joe Biden on his election victory. But at Mar-a-Lago, Trump greeted Netanyahu and his spouse Sara with open arms, and after their dialog arrange a makeshift cupboard assembly round a boardroom desk with Netanyahu’s prime brass and his personal.
Perhaps Netanyahu’s final metric of success within the U.S. got here as he ready to fly residence. On July 27, the centrist Israeli tv station Channel 12 launched a ballot that confirmed his main all three of his potential rivals in a hypothetical snap election.
Less than a day after the assembly with Trump, a Hezbollah rocket launched from Lebanon struck a soccer discipline in northern Israel, killing 12, largely youngsters. In retaliation for the soccer-field assault, Israel on July 30 bombed a senior Hezbollah commander in a suburb of Beirut—a uncommon strike within the Lebanese capital.
Just hours later, information broke that the Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh had been killed in his sleep in Tehran, the place he had simply attended the inauguration of the brand new Iranian President. The Iranians accused the Israelis of the hit, which was reportedly delivered by way of a bomb secreted into an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse. Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement however went on excessive alert, awaiting the promised Iranian retaliation.
Last April, a wider battle had been narrowly prevented when Iran responded to an Israeli airstrike that killed an Iranian common with an enormous however telegraphed direct assault on Israel that was rebuffed with the assistance of the allied defenses organized by the U.S. This time, each side once more professed to wish to keep away from a broader battle, at the same time as every encounter examined the road between deterrence and provocation.
Read extra: On TikTook, Gaza’s Palestinians Plead to the World: ‘Don’t Scroll’
If a bigger warfare can certainly be averted, Netanyahu believes he can transcend the infamy of Oct. 7 in two methods, in accordance with these near him. One is by efficiently ridding Gaza of Hamas. The second: cementing a Saudi-Israel normalization deal. This can be a dramatic growth of the Abraham Accords solid underneath Trump, which normalized Israel’s ties with 4 Arab nations. Eviscerating Hamas, then offering the Jewish state a community of alliances within the coronary heart of the Islamic world, would flip a disaster right into a strategic triumph.
The two objectives might intersect in Netanyahu’s imprecise plan for a postwar Gaza. Once Hamas is out of energy, he says, he desires to recruit Arab international locations to assist set up a civilian Palestinian governing entity that wouldn’t pose a risk to Israel. “I’d prefer to see a civilian administration run by Gazans, maybe with the assist of regional companions,” says Netanyahu. “Demilitarization by Israel, civilian administration by Gaza.”
Few Israelis see this as a sensible situation. “He doesn’t have any plan for the endgame,” says Efraim Halevy, a former head of Mossad. “First of all, it took him a very long time to confess that there can be an endgame, however he has by no means revealed it as a proposition, and what he has revealed could be very flimsy.” It additionally strikes Palestinians as unlikely. “Not until there’s some sort of Palestinian buy-in, and there is not going to be a buy-in to one thing that’s not Palestinian run,” says Khalidi. “Something that’s run by the Emirates or every other various isn’t going to fly.”
The fates of Israelis and Palestinians stay inextricably intertwined. If Israel doesn’t discover a technique to peacefully separate from the thousands and thousands of Palestinians within the West Bank and Gaza, it faces a way forward for both absorbing them as residents and shedding its Jewish majority, or depriving them of the rights and freedoms afforded to the Jewish inhabitants and shedding its democracy.
Netanyahu has no real interest in overseeing the creation of a Palestinian state. Rather, he gives a imaginative and prescient of restricted pockets of autonomy in Palestinian areas the place Israel maintains overriding safety management, a model of the state of affairs within the West Bank at present. “That’s a detraction of sovereign powers,” he admits, “there’s no query about it.” But he additionally tacitly acknowledges the dilemma Israel faces. “I agree we should always keep a Jewish majority, however I feel we should always do it in democratic means,” he says. “That’s why I don’t wish to incorporate the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria as residents of Israel,” referring to the biblical title of the West Bank. “It signifies that they need to run their very own lives. They ought to vote for their very own establishments. They ought to have their very own self-governance. But they need to not have the facility to threaten us.”
The Saudis have publicly stated Israel must be taking steps towards a Palestinian state with the intention to clinch a normalization deal. But Netanyahu’s far-right ruling coalition received’t tolerate any transfer in that route. Naming Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister and Belazel Smotrich as Finance Minister is, as Union for Reform Judaism president Rick Jacobs has put it, like a U.S. President welcoming into the Cabinet the KKK. The former cheered on the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin; the latter has stated Israel can be “justified” in ravenous Palestinians to dying however the world received’t allow them to. Together, they’ve undertaken a bureaucratic push to remove any risk of Palestinian sovereignty. Smotrich has licensed unlawful Israeli outposts within the West Bank and streamlined the approval of settlement actions to increase Israel’s footprint within the occupied territories.
Extremist parts have seeped deeper and deeper into Israeli society since Oct. 7. At the top of July, a Palestinian detainee was rushed to the hospital with extreme wounds after being sexually abused with a polelike object. Far-right demonstrators, together with some lawmakers, stormed a army base to protest the arrest of 9 suspects.
The compounding crises could have Israel on the best threat since its founding 76 years in the past. Halevy, the previous Mossad chief, views the state of affairs ominously. “There had been 70 or so years between the temples,” he says, referring to the final two durations the Jewish folks had sovereignty in Israel. “You can say that there’s a sample right here.”
Amid the gathering sense of existential hazard, Netanyahu is, as at all times, pitching himself as the person who can make sure that Zionism survives the warfare. “It will, if we win,” he says. “And if we don’t, our future might be in nice jeopardy.” Barak, the previous Prime Minister, says Netanyahu is in his psychological factor. “He genuinely believes that he’s saving Israel,” says Barak. “Not that he’s answerable for one of many worst occasions in its historical past.”
Ultimately, the Israeli citizens will decide its future. Though 7 in 10 Israelis say he ought to step down, the Channel 12 ballot confirmed Netanyahu successful a plurality of 32% assist. “There’s a disconnect between public opinion, which is a majority towards him in each measure, and his potential for him to remain in energy,” says Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli pollster. “That doesn’t essentially translate into shedding energy in elections.”
The nation’s personal fraught historical past suggests Netanyahu’s vulnerability. Prime Minister Golda Meir resigned months after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish 12 months, killing over 2,600 Israeli troopers. Netanyahu has himself been a harsh judge of leaders who oversaw army disasters. In 2008, after a damning report was revealed on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s administration of the 2006 Lebanon warfare, he referred to as Olmert unfit and incompetent. “The authorities is in command of the army, and it failed miserably,” Netanyahu stated on the time. “The political echelon and its chief refuse to take accountability and exhibit private integrity and management—which is what the decisive majority of the general public expects them to do.”
In his workplace on Kaplan Street, TIME asks Netanyahu whether or not he intends to stay Prime Minister. “I’ll keep in workplace so long as I consider I may also help lead Israel to a way forward for safety, enduring safety and prosperity,” he replies. And would he say an opposition chief who presided over Israel’s worst safety failure ought to keep in energy?
Netanyahu pauses to assume by means of his reply. “It relies upon what they do,” he says. “What do they do? Are they able to main the nation in warfare? Can they lead it to victory? Can they guarantee that the postwar state of affairs might be certainly one of peace and safety? If the reply is sure, they need to keep in energy.”
“In any case,” he says, “that’s the choice of the folks.” —With reporting by Vera Bergengruen/Washington and Leslie Dickstein/New York
