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      Israel’s Government Collapses, Setting Up 5th Election in 3 Years

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      The governing coalition decided to dissolve Parliament, plunging the country back into paralysis and throwing a political lifeline to Benjamin Netanyahu.JERUSALEM — Israel’s governing coalition will dissolve Parliament before the end of the month, bringing down the government and sending the country to a fifth election in three years, the prime minister said on Monday.The decision plunged Israel back into paralysis and threw a political lifeline to Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister who left office just one year ago upon the formation of the current government. Mr. Netanyahu is currently standing trial on corruption charges but has refused to leave politics, and his Likud party is leading in the polls.Once Parliament formally votes to dissolve itself, it will bring down the curtain on one of the most ambitious political projects in Israeli history: an unwieldy eight-party coalition that united political opponents from the right, left and center, and included the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition.But that ideological diversity was also its undoing.Differences between the coalition’s two ideological wings, compounded by unrelenting pressure from Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing alliance, led two right-wing lawmakers to defect — removing the coalition’s majority in Parliament. When several left-wing and Arab lawmakers also rebelled on key votes, the coalition found it impossible to govern.The final straw was the government’s inability last week to muster enough votes to extend a two-tier legal system in the West Bank, which has differentiated between Israeli settlers and Palestinians since Israel occupied the territory in 1967.Several Arab members of the coalition declined to vote for the system, which must be extended every five years. That prevented the bill’s passage and prompted Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former settler leader, to collapse the government and thereby delay a final vote until after another election.“We did everything we possibly could to preserve this government, whose survival we see as a national interest,” Mr. Bennett, 50, said in a televised speech. “To my regret, our efforts did not succeed,” he added.Expected to be held in the fall, the snap election will be Israel’s fifth since April 2019. It comes at an already delicate time for the country, after a rise in Palestinian attacks on Israelis and an escalation in a clandestine war between Israel and Iran. It also complicates diplomacy with Israel’s most important ally, the United States, as the new political crisis arose less than a month before President Joseph R. Biden’s first visit to the Middle East as a head of state.Mr. Biden will be welcomed by a caretaker prime minister, Yair Lapid, the current foreign minister. The terms of the coalition agreement dictated that if the government collapsed because of right-wing defections, Mr. Lapid, a centrist former broadcaster, would take over as interim leader from Mr. Bennett.Mr. Lapid will lead the government for at least several months, through the election campaign and the protracted coalition negotiations likely to follow.Former premier Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press at the Knesset on Monday.Oren Ben Hakoon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn a show of unity on Monday night, Mr. Bennett and Mr. Lapid gave consecutive speeches from the same stage, both hailing the successes of an unlikely government that many analysts did not expect to last even for a year.The fractious alliance was formed last June after four inconclusive elections in two years had left Israel without a state budget or a functional government.The coalition’s members agreed to team up to end this paralysis, and because of their shared desire to oust Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to resign despite standing trial on corruption charges had alienated many of his natural allies on the right, leading some of them to ally with their ideological opponents to remove him from office.The coalition was cohesive enough to pass a new budget, Israel’s first in more than three years, and to make key administrative appointments. It steadied Israel’s relationship with the Biden administration and deepened its emerging ties with key Arab states.Its leaders and supporters also hailed it for showing that compromise and civility were still possible in a society deeply divided along political, religious and ethnic lines.“We formed a government which many believed was an impossible one — we formed it in order to stop the terrible tailspin Israel was in the midst of,” Mr. Bennett said in his speech.“Together we were able to pull Israel out from the hole,” he added.Nevertheless, the government was ultimately unable to overcome its contradictions.Its members clashed regularly over the rights of Israel’s Arab minority, the relationship between religion and state, and settlement policy in the occupied West Bank — clashes that ultimately led two key members to defect, and others to vote against government bills.The new election offers Mr. Netanyahu another chance to win enough votes to form his own majority coalition. But his path back to power is far from clear.Polls suggest that his party, Likud, will easily be the largest in the next Parliament, but its allies may not have enough seats to let Mr. Netanyahu assemble a parliamentary majority. Some parties may also only agree to work with Likud if Mr. Netanyahu steps down as party leader.The opening of the summer session of the Knesset last month.Maya Alleruzzo/Associated PressThis dynamic may lead to months of protracted coalition negotiations, returning Israel to the stasis it fell into before Mr. Netanyahu’s departure, when his government lacked the cohesion to enact a national budget or fill important positions in the civil service, and the country held four elections in two years. Through it all, Mr. Netanyahu is expected to remain on trial, a yearslong process that is unaffected by a new election, and which will likely only end if he either accepts a plea deal, is found guilty or innocent, or if prosecutors withdraw their charges. Despite the promises of some coalition members, the outgoing government failed to pass legislation to bar a candidate charged with criminal offenses from becoming prime minister.Critics fear Mr. Netanyahu will use a return to office to pass laws that might obstruct the prosecution, an accusation that he has denied.Understand the Collapse of Israel’s GovernmentCard 1 of 4A fragile coalition. More

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      Israeli Government Loses Parliament Majority, Raising Prospect of Election

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      A second lawmaker has defected from the government coalition. The move edges Israel closer to the polls for the fifth time in three years.CAIRO — A second lawmaker has quit Israel’s governing coalition, giving the opposition a narrow two-seat majority in Parliament and raising the possibility of a fifth election in three years that would deepen the country’s political stasis.Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, a member of Israel’s Palestinian minority from the left-wing Meretz party, resigned from the coalition on Thursday, the second lawmaker to do so in two months.Ms. Rinawie Zoabi attributed her decision to the government’s treatment of the Arab community in Israel, and its expansion of settlements in the West Bank. She said recent police interventions at the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the police assault on mourners at a journalist’s funeral last week were the final straws.“Again and again, the coalition leaders have preferred to adopt hawkish, hard-line and right-wing positions on important basic issues of unparalleled importance to the general Arab society,” Ms. Rinawie Zoabi wrote in a resignation letter to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.“No more,” she added. “I cannot continue to support the existence of a coalition that conspires in this disgraceful manner against the society from which I have come.”Without Ms. Rinawie Zoabi, the government could still survive with a minority in Parliament until March 2023, when it will need a majority to pass a new budget. As prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Shamir each led minority governments for extended periods, including when Mr. Rabin negotiated the Oslo Accords in the 1990s.The current coalition could also try to entice members of the opposition to join the government, reinstating its majority.But Ms. Rinawie Zoabi’s defection means that opposition lawmakers now control 61 of the 120 seats in Parliament, enough to vote to dissolve the body and call for another election, the fifth since April 2019.Opposition parties also have enough seats to create their own new coalition government without going to elections. But they are divided and may not be able to agree on a candidate for prime minister, making new elections more probable.The defections could offer a political lifeline to Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who was ousted in June when the current coalition was formed. The eight parties of the coalition overcame profound ideological differences because they shared a desire to remove Mr. Netanyahu, whose refusal to resign despite standing trial for corruption had alienated many of his natural allies on the right.As a left-winger, Ms. Rinawie Zoabi is not expected to support a Netanyahu-led government. But she could join the opposition in voting for new elections as early as next week.A spokesman for Ms. Rinawie-Zoabi said that she had not decided whether or not to support a vote to dissolve Parliament.That would give Mr. Netanyahu another chance to win more seats for his right-wing alliance, giving them a majority in Parliament.Ms. Rinawie Zoabi’s departure from the coalition is the latest manifestation of the incompatibility of the government’s eight constituent parties — a fractious alliance of right-wing, left-wing, secular, religious and Arab groups that joined forces in June after multiple inconclusive elections had left Israel without a state budget or a functional government.The coalition was cohesive enough to pass a new budget, Israel’s first in more than three years. It also made key administrative appointments and deepened Israel’s emerging relationships with key Arab states.At its formation, Ms. Rinawie Zoabi said she had hoped the government would forge “a new path of equality and respect” between Jewish and Arab Israelis. In a first for Israel, the coalition included an independent Arab party, Raam, while an Arab was appointed as a government minister for only the third time in Israeli history.But despite that early optimism, the government’s members clashed regularly over the rights of Israel’s Arab minority and over settlement policy in the occupied West Bank.Tensions came to a head during the recent holy month of Ramadan, when the Israeli police regularly clashed with Palestinian stone-throwers at the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, a site sacred to both Muslims and Jews. They escalated further last week, when a Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was shot dead in the West Bank during an Israeli raid — and when police attacked mourners carrying her coffin at her funeral two days later.But while Mr. Bennett managed to persuade Raam to stay in the coalition through these successive crises, he has few means of preventing further defections from its left-wing and Arab members. He is also struggling to prevent further rebellion from the coalition’s right-wing members, who feel he has already boosted Arab society enough.Last month, a right-wing member of the coalition, Idit Silman, became the first member of government to defect — and there are fears that others may follow, particularly with the administration under pressure from the right to respond more forcefully to a rise in terrorist attacks.Should new elections be called, Israel could also be led by a new interim prime minister until a government is formed. Under the terms of the current coalition agreement, Mr. Lapid, the foreign minister, could take over from Mr. Bennett in the event of snap elections, depending on the manner in which the government collapses.That could leave Mr. Lapid, a centrist former broadcaster, in charge for at least several months, through an election campaign and the protracted coalition negotiations that will most likely follow.Carol Sutherland contributed reporting from Moshav Ben Ami, Israel. More

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      Macron’s Win Is Also a Blow to Orban’s Nationalist Crusade in Europe

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      The Hungarian leader had cast his own victory as the start of a nationalist wave in Europe — one that Marine Le Pen would have joined. Instead, Mr. Macron’s victory in France is a win for the European Union’s approach.BRUSSELS — There were sighs of relief throughout the European Union after President Emmanuel Macron beat back a serious challenge in France from the populist far-right champion Marine Le Pen.Then another populist went down, in Slovenia, where the country’s three-time prime minister, Janez Jansa, lost to a loose coalition of centrist rivals in parliamentary elections on Sunday.Those two defeats were widely seen as a reprieve for the European Union and its fundamental principles, including judicial independence, shared sovereignty and the supremacy of European law. That is because they dealt a blow to the ambitions and worldview of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, who avidly supported both Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Jansa in an effort to create a coalition of more nationalist, religious and anti-immigration politics that could undermine the authority of the European Union itself.“Europe can breathe,” said Jean-Dominique Giuliani, chairman of the Robert Schuman Foundation, a pro-European research center.After his own electoral victory earlier this month, Mr. Orban declared: “The whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics and patriotic politics have won. We are telling Europe that this is not the past: This is the future. This will be our common European future.”Not yet, it seems.With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Orban, who has been close to both former President Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s president, is more isolated in Europe than in many years. He has been a model for the Polish government of the Law and Justice party, which has also challenged what it considers the liberal politics and the overbearing bureaucratic and judicial influence of Brussels. But Law and Justice is deeply anti-Putin, a mood sharpened by the war.Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary in Szekesfehervar during his party’s final rally before the election this month.Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times“The international environment for Orban has never been so dire,” said Peter Kreko, director of Political Capital, a Budapest-based research institution.Mr. Orban found support from Mr. Trump, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and from the Italian populist leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. But they are all gone, as Mr. Jansa is expected to be, and now Mr. Orban “has fewer friends in the world,” Mr. Kreko said.Ms. Le Pen’s party was given a 10.7 million euro loan in March to help fund her campaign from Hungary’s MKB bank, whose major shareholders are considered close to Mr. Orban. And Hungarian media and social media openly supported both Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Jansa.Ms. Le Pen’s strong showing was a reminder that populism — on both the right and the left — remains a vibrant force in a Europe, with high voter dissatisfaction over rising inflation, soaring energy prices, slow growth, immigration and the bureaucracy emanating from E.U. headquarters in Brussels.But now Mr. Macron, as the first French president to be re-elected in 20 years, has new authority to press his ideas for more European responsibility and collective defense.Marine Le Pen conceding to Mr. Macron on Sunday.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAfter the retirement late last year of Angela Merkel, the former chancellor of Germany, Mr. Macron will inevitably be seen as the de facto leader of the European Union, with a stronger voice and standing to push issues he cares about. Those include a more robust European pillar in defense and security, economic reform and fighting climate change.“He is going to want to go further and faster,” said Georgina Wright, an analyst at the Institut Montaigne in Paris.But Ms. Wright and other analysts say he must also learn lessons from his first term and try to consult more widely. His penchant for announcing proposals rather than building coalitions at times annoyed his European counterparts, leaving him portrayed as a vanguard of one, leading with no followers.“Europe is central to his policy and will be in his second term, too,” said Jeremy Shapiro, research director for the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. “In the first term, he underachieved relative to his expectations on Europe — he had a lot of grand plans but failed to create the coalitions he needed, with Germany and the Central European states, to implement them.”The Dutch, too, as the Netherlands and Germany together lead Europe’s “frugal” nations, are skeptical about Mr. Macron’s penchant to spend more of their money on European projects.Mr. Macron “knows that lesson and is making some efforts in the context of the Russian war against Ukraine,” Mr. Shapiro said. “But he’s still Emmanuel Macron.”In his second term, Mr. Macron “will double down” on the ideas for Europe that he presented in his speech to the Sorbonne in 2017, “especially the idea of European sovereignty,” said Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund.But in his second term, she predicted, he will be more pragmatic, building “coalitions of the willing and able” even if he cannot find unanimity among the other 26 Union members.Prime Minister Janez Jansa of Slovenia on Sunday, hours before the announcement that his party had lost to a centrist coalition.Jure Makovec/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFrance holds the rotating presidency of the bloc until the end of June, and one of Mr. Macron’s priorities will be to push forward an oil embargo on Russia, Ms. de Hoop Scheffer said, a move that has been complicated by the fact that many in the bloc are dependent on Moscow for energy.The climate agenda is important for him, especially if he wants to reach out to the angry left and the Greens in France. And to get much done in Europe, he will need to restore and strengthen the Franco-German relationship with a new, very different and divided German government.“That relationship is not easy, and when you look at the Franco-German couple, not a lot keeps us together,” Ms. de Hoop Scheffer said.There are differences over Mr. Macron’s desire for more collective debt for another European recovery plan, given the effects of war. There is also a lack of consensus over how to manage the response to Russia’s aggression, she said — how much to keep lines open to Mr. Putin, and what kinds of military support should be provided to Ukraine in the face of German hesitancy to supply heavy weapons.Germany is much happier to work in wartime within NATO under American leadership than to spend much time on Mr. Macron’s concept of European strategic autonomy, she noted. And Poland and the other frontline states bordering Russia have never had much confidence in Mr. Macron’s goal of strategic autonomy or his promise to do nothing to undermine NATO, a feeling underscored by the current war.If Mr. Macron is clever, “French leadership in Europe will not be followership by the other E.U. countries, but their empowerment, by their commitment to a new European vision,” said Nicholas Dungan, a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council. “Macron can do this.”Campaign posters for the presidential runoff candidates in Paris last week.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times More

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      Israel’s Spy Agency Snubbed the U.S. Can Trust Be Restored?

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      Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, heads to Washington promising better relations and seeking support for covert attacks on Iran’s nuclear program.WASHINGTON — The cable sent this year by the outgoing C.I.A. officer in charge of building spy networks in Iran reverberated throughout the intelligence agency’s Langley headquarters, officials say: America’s network of informers had largely been lost to Tehran’s brutally efficient counterintelligence operations, which has stymied efforts to rebuild it.Israel has helped fill the breach, officials say, its robust operations in Iran providing the United States with streams of reliable intelligence on Iran’s nuclear activities, missile programs and on its support for militias around the region.The two countries’ intelligence services have a long history of cooperation and operated in virtual lock step during the Trump administration, which approved or was party to many Israeli operations in its shadow war against Iran.That changed after the election of President Biden, who promised to restore the nuclear agreement with Iran that Israel so vigorously opposed. In the spring, Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s prime minister, even curtailed intelligence sharing with the United States because he did not trust the Biden administration.The challenge for the two countries — as Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, meets with Mr. Biden at the White House on Thursday — will be whether they can rebuild that trust even as they pursue contradictory agendas on Iran. The Biden administration favors a diplomatic approach, reviving and building on the 2015 nuclear agreement, while Israeli officials say that only force can stop Iran from building an atomic bomb.A key goal for Mr. Bennett will be to determine whether the Biden administration will continue to support Israel’s covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program, senior Israeli officials said.Israeli officials hope that any new deal with Iran will not limit such operations, which in the past have included sabotage of Iranian nuclear facilities and the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.The White House meeting comes just weeks after William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, traveled to Israel to meet his counterpart, David Barnea, as well as Mr. Bennett, a sign of the importance of intelligence cooperation to the bilateral relationship.“The sharing of intelligence and operational activity between Israel and the United States is one of the most important subjects on the agenda for the meeting,” said Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi Farkash, a former director of Israeli military intelligence. “Israel has developed unique capabilities for intelligence collection in a number of enemy countries, capabilities that the United States was not able to grow on its own and without which its national security would be vulnerable. ”William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, second from left, recently met with his counterpart in Israel. The two agencies are trying to rebuild trust as their countries pursue contradictory agendas on Iran.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesIn his meeting with Mr. Biden, Mr. Bennett’s hand will be strengthened by the fact that the United States has become more dependent on Israel for information on Iran. The United States has other sources of information, including electronic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, but it lacks the in-country spy network Israel has..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The risk of such dependence became clear in April when Israel set off explosives at Iran’s Natanz nuclear plant.Mr. Netanyahu had ordered his national security officials to reduce the information that they conveyed to the United States about planned operations in Iran, American and Israeli officials said.And on the day of the attack, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, gave the United States less than two hours’ notice, according to American and Israeli officials, far too short a time for the United States to assess the operation or ask Israel to call it off.Israeli and American officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified operations.Israeli officials said they took the precautions because Americans had leaked information about some Israeli operations, a charge U.S. officials deny. Other Israeli officials say the Biden administration had been inattentive to their security concerns, too focused on reviving the Iran nuclear agreement that President Donald J. Trump had pulled out of.A satellite photo showing the Natanz nuclear facility in April 2021. Days earlier, Israeli operatives set off a large explosion inside the plant. Planet Labs Inc., via Associated PressIn Washington, many American officials said they believed that Mr. Netanyahu was just resuming the grudge he had held against the Obama administration, which negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran.The last-minute notification of the Natanz operation was the starkest example that Israel had changed its procedures since the Trump presidency.Senior Biden administration officials said that the Israelis, at least in spirit, had violated a longstanding, unwritten agreement to at least advise the United States of covert operations, giving Washington a chance to object.Mr. Burns called his counterpart, Yossi Cohen, the Mossad chief, expressing concern over the snub, according to people briefed on the call.Mr. Cohen said that the belated notification was the result of operational constraints and uncertainty about when the Natanz operation would take place.For the American-Israeli intelligence relationship, it was another a sharp turnabout.Relations had soured during the Obama era.The Obama White House, concerned that Israel was leaking information, kept the existence of the negotiations with Iran secret from Israel, a former Obama administration official said. Israeli intelligence learned of the meetings from its own sources.Mr. Netanyahu was also convinced that American spy agencies were keeping him under surveillance, according to a former Israeli official.During the Trump administration, cooperation reached new highs.In the spring, Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s prime minister, curtailed intelligence sharing with the United States because he did not trust the Biden administration.Dan Balilty for The New York TimesWhen the Mossad stole Iran’s nuclear archive in 2018, the only foreign officials briefed in advance were Mr. Trump and his C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo.Israeli officials used the documents to convince Mr. Trump that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program, and Mr. Trump cited them when he withdrew from the nuclear agreement months later, a major victory for Mr. Netanyahu.“This was clever use of intelligence,” Mr. Netanyahu told The New York Times in 2019.Iran has denied that it seeks a nuclear weapon, but the archives showed that Iran had a nuclear weapons program as recently as 2003. According to American intelligence officials, no evidence has emerged that the program continued.During meetings with senior Trump administration officials in late 2019 and early 2020, Mr. Cohen presented a new Iran strategy, arguing for aggressive covert operations to sabotage Iran’s nuclear facilities and killing key personnel to force Iran to accept a stricter agreement.Israel began a wave of covert operations, keeping the Trump administration in the loop on a series of cyber and bombing attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and on the assassination of Iran’s chief nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in November 2020, after the American election but before Mr. Biden took office.The two countries also cooperated on two operations in 2020: a U.S. operation to kill the leader of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, and an Israeli operation to kill a Qaeda leader who had taken refuge in Tehran.Mr. Pompeo, who later served as secretary of state, said that there was no relationship more important during his four years in the Trump administration than the one that the C.I.A. had with the Mossad.“The two organizations really had a moment, an important moment in history,” he said in an interview in June.In January 2020, an American drone strike killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani as he was leaving the Baghdad airport. The strike was aided by Israeli intelligence.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesBut the warmth of the Trump years quickly gave way to chillier relations this year. The Biden administration’s announcement of its plan to return to the Iran nuclear deal and repeated delays of visits by Israeli intelligence officials to Washington deepened skepticism of the new administration in Israel.Mr. Cohen sought to repair the relationship with the United States during his final months as Mossad chief, a senior Israeli official said.On his final visit to Washington in April, a little more than two weeks after the Natanz bombing, he met with C.I.A. officials and Mr. Biden, promising a more transparent intelligence relationship. Mr. Burns gave him a warm reception, and an award for fostering the close partnership between the Mossad and the C.I.A.“You have people within both intelligence organizations that have had relationships for a very long time,” said Will Hurd, a former C.I.A. officer and former member of the House Intelligence Committee. “There is a closeness and an ability to potentially smooth out some of the problems that may manifest from the leaders.”Arguably as important in rebooting the relations between the two spy shops was the departure of Mr. Netanyahu from the prime minister’s office.Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who meets with President Biden on Thursday, said he would use the meeting with Mr. Biden to try to reset the tone of Israel’s relationship with the United States.Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesMr. Bennett says he wants to open a new chapter in relations with the White House, and has promised a more constructive approach.But the Mossad is already planning more secret operations in Iran. The question for the Biden administration is which are acceptable and when, General Zeevi Farkash said.“The U.S. and Israel must jointly identify the red lines so that if Iran crosses them, Israel can act to prevent it from achieving military nuclear capacity,” he said.Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman reported from Washington, and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington. More

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      Netanyahu Ousted as Israeli Parliament Votes in New Government

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      An unlikely coalition prevailed against the country’s longest-serving leader. Now it must get its disparate factions to work together.JERUSALEM — The long and divisive reign of Benjamin Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli politician of the past generation, officially ended on Sunday night, at least for the time being, as the country’s Parliament gave its vote of confidence to a precarious coalition government stitched together by widely disparate anti-Netanyahu forces.Naftali Bennett, a 49-year-old former aide to Mr. Netanyahu who opposes a Palestinian state and is considered to the right of his old ally, replaced him as prime minister after winning by just a single vote. Yair Lapid, a centrist leader and the new foreign minister, is set to take Mr. Bennett’s place after two years, if their government can hold together that long.They lead a fragile eight-party alliance ranging from far left to hard right, from secular to religious, that few expect to last a full term and many consider both the embodiment of the rich diversity of Israeli society but also the epitome of its political disarray.Members of the bloc agree on little but a desire to oust Mr. Netanyahu, the longest-serving leader in the country’s history, and the need to end a lengthy political gridlock that produced four elections in two years; left Israel without a stable government or a state budget; and formed the backdrop to a surge in interethnic mob violence between Jewish and Arab citizens during the recent 11-day conflict with Hamas.“We stopped the train before the abyss,” Mr. Bennett said in a speech to Parliament on Sunday. “The time has come for different leaders, from all parts of the people, to stop — to stop this madness.”Mr. Netanyahu’s departure marks the end of a tenure in which he shaped 21st-century Israel more than any other figure, and largely turned Israeli politics into a referendum on a single issue — his own character.During 15 years in power, the last 12 of them uninterrupted, Mr. Netanyahu helped shift Israel further to the right and presided over the dwindling of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, collapsing hopes of a two-state resolution to the conflict. He was also accused of undermining the rule of law by staying in office while standing trial for corruption. It was a decision that divided the Israeli right and contributed to Mr. Bennett’s decision to side with Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents.Mr. Netanyahu, 71, simultaneously scored several diplomatic triumphs, including agreements with four Arab countries that upended assumptions that Israel would only normalize relations with the Arab world after it sealed peace with the Palestinians.In a combative speech on Sunday to Parliament, Mr. Netanyahu vowed to stay at the helm of his party, Likud, leading opposition to a new government that he portrayed as a leftist threat to Israeli security.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking before the vote on Sunday.Dan Balilty for The New York Times“I say today: Do not let your spirits fall,” Mr. Netanyahu told his allies in Parliament. “I will lead you in a daily battle against this bad and dangerous left-wing government, and bring it down. And with the help of God, this will happen faster than you think.”Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, approved the new government by the slimmest of margins — the vote was 60 to 59. In a sign of challenges to come, one lawmaker who had originally agreed to support the coalition balked at the 11th hour, deciding to abstain instead of voting in its favor. To ensure the coalition’s victory, a second lawmaker left a hospital to vote — and then returned to her hospital bed.Analysts predict that the new Israeli government will focus on restoring Israel’s traditional approach of seeking bipartisan American support, after years of tension with American Democrats.In a statement, Mr. Biden said: “I look forward to working with Prime Minister Bennett to strengthen all aspects of the close and enduring relationship between our two nations.”“Thank you Mr. President!” Mr. Bennett replied on Twitter. “I look forward to working with you to strengthen the ties between our two nations.”In his earlier speech to Parliament, however, Mr. Bennett hinted at disagreements to come, promising to continue Israel’s opposition to forging a new nuclear deal with Iran. But he also thanked Mr. Biden for his support for Israel. The pair later spoke by phone, Mr. Bennett’s office said, while Mr. Lapid spoke with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.The new government was installed following a rancorous parliamentary debate that embodied the bitterness that came to define political discourse in the Netanyahu era.During his speech, Mr. Bennett was frequently interrupted and heckled by right-wing opponents. They view Mr. Bennett, a hard-right former settler leader, as a traitor for breaking with Mr. Netanyahu and allying with a coalition that includes leftists, centrists and, for the first time ever, an independent party run by Palestinian citizens of Israel.Mansour Abbas of the Raam Party at the Knesset before the vote.Dan Balilty for The New York TimesAt least four allies of Mr. Netanyahu were thrown out of the session by the speaker, Yariv Levin, while a fifth walked out voluntarily.“You should be embarrassed!” shouted David Amsalem, a Likud lawmaker, during Mr. Bennett’s speech.Mr. Bennett attempted to turn those interjections into an illustration of why he had decided to part ways with Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc in the first place.“There are points in Jewish history where disagreements got out of control,” Mr. Bennett said. “Twice in history we lost our national home exactly because the leaders of that generation were unable to sit together and compromise.”But amid the acrimony, there were also moments of unity and empathy across party lines.After Mr. Levin, the speaker, was replaced in a separate vote by Mickey Levy, an ally of Mr. Lapid, the two embraced for several seconds. Earlier, ultra-Orthodox lawmakers laughed amiably along with jokes by Merav Michaeli, a staunch secularist and critic of Mr. Netanyahu — barely an hour after they had hurled insults at Mr. Bennett, her new coalition partner.Until the day of the vote, and even on it, Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing allies labored hard to break the alliance before it could take office. They applied intense pressure on right-wing opposition lawmakers, urging them to peel away from their leaders and refuse to support a coalition that they claimed would ruin the country. For most of this month, supporters of Mr. Netanyahu picketed the homes of Mr. Bennett and his lawmakers, screaming abuse as they came past.Mr. Netanyahu’s departure was a watershed moment for politics in Israel. He had been in power for so long that he was the only prime minister that many young adults could remember. For many, he had grown synonymous not only with the Israeli state, but also with the concept of Israeli security — and an Israel without him seemed almost inconceivable to some.In Tel Aviv, ecstatic Netanayhu opponents descended onto Rabin Square for an impromptu celebration. As music blasted, Israelis of all ages crowded in carrying the national flag, rainbow flags and pink flags, the color adopted by members of the movement to oust the prime minister..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}One celebrant, Shoval Sadde, expressed relief that the coalition had come together after weeks of uncertainty.“Today is final,” she said. “There are no secret magics anymore that Bibi can pull out of a hat. It’s final.”For supporters of Bibi, as Mr. Netanyahu is universally known in Israel, his exit was devastating and unsettling.“We are here in pain,” said Ronni Shabtai, a right-wing activist who joined a rally outside Mr. Netanyahu’s official residence after the vote. “Bibi is a prime minister born once in a generation, and a king in our time.”Likud Party supporters demonstrating outside Mr. Netanyahu’s home on Sunday night.Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesGiven Mr. Netanyahu’s record as a shrewd political operator who has defied many previous predictions of his political demise, few Israelis are writing off his career.Even out of government and standing trial on corruption charges, he remains a formidable force who will probably try to drive wedges between the coalition parties. He remains the leader of the parliamentary opposition and a cagey tactician, with a sizable following and powerful allies.Mr. Netanyahu’s current predicament stems largely from his decision to remain in office even after being investigated for corruption in 2017, and later put on trial. That led to a rift among his supporters — and, more generally, divided voters less by their political views than by their attitudes to Mr. Netanyahu himself. The result was four early elections over two years, each of which failed to return a clear winner.Through it all, Mr. Netanyahu remained in office, for much of it only as a caretaker, stoking divisions and demonizing his opponents.The new coalition proposes to set aside some of the toughest issues and focus on rebuilding the economy and infrastructure. Many supporters hope to see movement away from the social policies promoted by the ultra-Orthodox minority, whose parties were allied with Mr. Netanyahu. But it remains to be seen whether the new government will avoid another gridlock or crumble under its own contradictions.Mr. Bennett’s religious Zionist party, Yamina, supports annexation of large parts of the West Bank and vehemently opposes Palestinian statehood, positions antithetical to some of its governing partners. In the March 23 election, it won just seven of the Knesset’s 120 seats, making it the smallest faction ever to hold the premiership.Mr. Bennett, right, with Mr. Lapid and the defense minister, Benny Gantz, in the Knesset on Sunday.Dan Balilty for The New York TimesIt was Mr. Lapid who brought the coalition together, working with an array of vastly differing parties, and promising to make way for Mr. Bennett even though his own party had won more seats.The coalition will face threats to its cohesion as soon as Monday, when it must decide whether to allow a far-right march through Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem. The march is a rescheduled version of an aborted event that was cited by Hamas as one of several reasons for firing rockets last month toward Jerusalem, setting off the recent conflict in Gaza.“The coalition is such an ideological patchwork it might even be a jigsaw puzzle,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based political analyst. “And it’s not clear whether the pieces actually fit together.”Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York. Reporting was contributed by Irit Pazner Garshowitz, Myra Noveck, Adam Rasgon and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel. More

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      in Elections

      Netanyahu’s Road Through Israel’s History, in Pictures

      by

      “Bibi, King of Israel!”That is a shout from his fervent supporters that might have given pause to King David, let alone King Solomon. But Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has finally lost his job, unable to cobble together a final majority in the Knesset after four elections in the last two years.The government that has now replaced him is fragile, however. Little holds it together except a desire to get Mr. Netanyahu out of office, where he will no longer be immune from punishment, if convicted, over charges of corruption.But Mr. Netanyahu still appears to rule Israel’s largest party, Likud, and given Israel’s riven politics, his fall may only be a sort of sabbatical.Whatever the criticism of his actions and political cynicism, Mr. Netanyahu’s career represents an extraordinary accomplishment for a man who grew up in the shadow of a difficult and demanding father and a hero brother, killed at the age of 30 in command of one of Israel’s most storied military ventures, Operation Entebbe. The 1976 operation rescued hostages held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.Both brothers served in the military’s elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal. But Bibi survived to put a more lasting stamp on the young state through his political and economic policies, his toughness toward rivals. He has an instinctive sense of what drives Israelis — the search for security in one of the most unstable regions of the world, a Jewish state built on the remnants the Nazis left behind, in the midst of an Arab and Iranian sea.Mr. Netanyahu, right, during a training exercise as a member of the Israeli Army’s Sayeret Matkal commando unit.Israeli Government Press OfficeIsraeli troops patrol fields around a hijacked Sabena aircraft in Tel Aviv in 1972. Mr. Netanyahu’s commando unit, led by Ehud Barak, another future prime minister, rescued the passengers from hijackers.Associated PressMr. Netanyahu with his daughter Noa in 1980.Israeli Government Press OfficeMr. Netanyahu’s path to leadership was not an obvious one. Born in Israel, he grew up partly in the United States, where his father, a deeply conservative scholar of Judaic history, was teaching.He returned to Israel after high school, fluent in English, to make a distinguished career as a commando in Sayaret Matkal, where he rose to captain and was wounded several times.He then returned to the United States, using the more Anglicized name Ben Nitay (later changed to Benjamin Ben Nitai) to get degrees in architecture and business management. By 1978, he was already appearing on American television, where his English made him an ideal guest to discuss Israel.He found his way into diplomacy and politics in the early 1980s, when he was appointed deputy chief of mission to the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He then served as ambassador to the United Nations before returning to Israel to enter politics in earnest.He joined the Likud in 1988 and was elected to Parliament.Mr. Netanyahu, accompanied by Government Secretary Elyakim Rubinstein, on a flight from New York to Washington in 1989, when Mr. Netanyahu served as deputy foreign minister.Israeli Government Press OfficeRight-wing activists pasting campaign posters for Mr. Netanyahu over campaign posters for Prime Minister Shimon Peres in May 1996, before the election that would bring Mr. Netanyahu to power.David Silverman/ReutersBenjamin and Sara Netanyahu in Jerusalem on election day in 1996.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBy 1993, he was the leader of Likud and was a strong critic of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the Labor party and his willingness to give up territory to reach peace with the Palestinians in the Oslo accords. After Mr. Rabin was assassinated in 1995, Mr. Netanyahu was criticized for language approaching incitement, a charge he said he found deeply wounding.But he defeated Washington’s favorite candidate, Shimon Peres, in the 1996 elections by pushing the theme of security in the midst of a badly managed conflict with Lebanon and a series of terrorist bombings by Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He became the youngest prime minister in Israeli history and the first to be born in the independent state.That same year, 1996, Mr. Netanyahu represented Israel for the first time in summit meetings organized by President Clinton, who was eager to build on Oslo to create a more lasting peace.Then and later, in the 1998 Wye River summit, Mr. Netanyahu proved a difficult partner. He was willing to appeal to American Jews and Israel supporters in Congress to heighten political pressure on Mr. Clinton not to press Israel to go farther than he judged wise.His relations with the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, were always tense, and the two never came to trust one another enough to reach the peace that Mr. Clinton thought was within grasp.Vice President Al Gore watching as Yasir Arafat, King Hussein of Jordan, President Clinton and Mr. Netanyahu leave the Oval Office after a Middle East summit meeting in 1996.Paul Hosefros/The New York TimesThe Israeli and Palestinian leaders failed to resolve any of their differences during the two-day summit.Doug Mills/Associated PressSurrounded by security personnel, Mr. Netanyahu, with his wife Sara and son Avner, spent a holiday at the beach in Caesarea in August 1997.Shaul Golan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhile Mr. Netanyahu did much to reform Israel’s economy, charges of corruption, both large and petty, surrounded him and hurt his popularity.After the failure of his Labor Party successor, Ehud Barak, to reach peace with the Palestinians at long meetings at Camp David and again, just before Mr. Clinton left office, Mr. Netanyahu returned to politics. But he lost out to Ariel Sharon, then went on to serve in his cabinet. After a period in opposition, Mr. Netanyahu became prime minister again in 2009 and has remained in office since.But his relations with American presidents continued to be fraught, and he and President Obama developed a deep mutual disdain.Mr. Obama pushed too hard too early to try to get Israel to stop settlement building in the occupied West Bank, while Mr. Netanyahu believed that Mr. Obama was putting Israel at an existential risk by trying to do a deal with Iran to curb its nuclear program.While Iran denied it was aiming to develop nuclear weapons, Mr. Netanyahu compared the threat of Iran to Israel and the Jews to the late 1930s in Europe, when Hitler took power.He tried to defeat the deal in every setting, from the United Nations, where he famously held up a cartoon bomb with a thick red line representing Iranian uranium enrichment, to the U.S. Congress itself, where he remained very popular, especially among Republicans.During his second tenure as prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu had an icy relationship with President Obama.Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesThe Iron Dome defense system being used to intercept incoming missiles fired from Gaza by Hamas militants in 2012.Tsafrir Abayov/Associated PressMr. Netanyahu, famous for his use of visual aids, displaying his red line for Iran’s nuclear program at the United Nations in 2012.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesMr. Netanyahu also dealt with the aftermath of Mr. Sharon’s decision to pull Israeli troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip, a step he opposed. Mr. Sharon dumped the keys to Gaza in the street, but they were picked up by the more radical Hamas, which seized control of the Palestinian territory from the more moderate Fatah faction led by Mr. Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas.Under Mr. Netanyahu, Israel made regular raids and airstrikes to try to stop rockets from Gaza hitting southern Israel, prompting criticism about the deaths of Palestinian civilians in a place many compared to an open-air prison, largely sealed off from the world by Israel and Egypt.But Mr. Netanyahu has refrained from any comprehensive re-invasion of Gaza and has had quiet talks through Egyptian mediators with Hamas to try to keep Gaza from imploding and dragging Israel into a larger war, especially another one with the Iranian-armed Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon.In the occupied West Bank, however, Israel continued to build a separation barrier between the Palestinians and ever-expanding settlements beyond the so-called Green Line, which delineated Israel’s boundaries under the 1949 armistice until the 1967 Arab-Israeli war..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media 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#e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Netanyahu increasingly depended on political support from Israelis who supported the settlement expansion and their eventual annexation, which he threatened but never carried out.At the same time, he has been making inroads with other Sunni Arab nations despite the continuing decline in relations with the Palestinians, pushing Israel’s solidarity with them against Iran. One of his great accomplishments, working with President Trump, were the Abraham Accords, which opened normal diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.Those accords survived the most recent exchange of fire last month with Hamas in Gaza, an 11-day clash that seemed, for now, to put the Palestinian issue back on the table. But even that conflict did not save Mr. Netanyahu.An Israeli tank near the town of Sderot at the border with Gaza during the seven-week war with Hamas in 2014.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMr. Netanyahu at the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.Lior Mizrahi/Getty ImagesMr. Netanyahu visiting the border fence between Israel and Jordan in 2016.Pool photo by Marc Israel SellemSome say that Mr. Netanyahu has sought his whole life to grow out of shadow of his brother and to make his own mark on Israeli history. There are streets all over Israel named after Yonatan Netanyahu.Only when Mr. Netanyahu’s father, hawkish and dominating, died in 2012 at the age of 102, Israelis said the prime minister could feel liberated enough to try to make peace with the Palestinians.But that has been a hope long deferred, as previous efforts at peace have proven hollow. Both the Israelis and Palestinians have pulled back from the deeply difficult compromises, both territorial and religious, that would be required for a lasting settlement of the unfinished war of 1948-49.Mr. Netanyahu, with his father, Benzion Netanyahu, visiting the grave of his brother Yoni at Mount Herzl in 2009 in Jerusalem. Yoni Netanyahu was killed during military operations in Uganda in July 1976.Amos Ben Gershom/Government Press OfficeHar Homa, a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, has more than 25,000 residents.Tomas Munita for The New York TimesMr. Netanyahu used one of the most prominent platforms in the world, the United States Congress, to warn against what he called a “bad deal” being negotiated with Iran to freeze its nuclear program in 2015.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Netanyahu was an early supporter of Mr. Trump and his presidency was a triumph for the Israeli leader. Having the support of an American president is crucial for Israelis and Mr. Netanyahu campaigned on his strong relationship with Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran deal and, in an obvious effort to help Mr. Netanyahu in this latest campaign, moved the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 war.But Mr. Trump’s defeat was a blow to Mr. Netanyahu. President Biden is trying to restore the Iran nuclear deal over fierce Israeli objections, intervened to press Mr. Netanyahu to bring an end to the latest Gaza clash and has repeated his support for a negotiated, two-state solution to the Palestinian issue.After President Trump’s election in 2016, Mr. Netanyahu found an ally in the White House.Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesProtesters seen through a banner showing Mr. Netanyahu in 2018.Oded Balilty/Associated PressMr. Netanyahu visiting a market in Jerusalem in 2019 during his campaign for a fifth term as prime minister.Dan Balilty for The New York TimesMr. Netanyahu remained in power so long not because Israelis think he is the nicest or cleanest man in the kingdom, but because they believed that he kept them safe and made them wealthier, and that he has succeeded in maintaining Israel’s security while reducing its isolation in the region.Mr. Netanyahu celebrating an election victory in 2020.Dan Balilty for The New York TimesMr. Netanyahu, right, with his lawyer at the Jerusalem district court in February during a hearing in his corruption trial.Pool photo by Reuven CastroIsrael’s Iron Dome missile defense system lights up the sky over Tel Aviv as it tries to intercept rockets fired from Gaza during the war last month.Corinna Kern for The New York TimesWhether or not he ever returns to power again, after Mr. Netanyahu dies, there will be many streets named after him, too.Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with the new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, after the Knesset approved the new coalition government on Sunday.Ronen Zvulun/Reuters More

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      Para Netanyahu, al igual que para Trump, solo un ‘fraude’ puede explicar su derrota

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      La transición democrática de Israel está programada para el domingo, pero nada es seguro en medio de la campaña del actual primer ministro que busca destruir a la coalición de sus oponentes.TEL AVIV, Israel — El primer ministro Benjamin Netanyahu considera que Israel está presenciando “el mayor fraude electoral de su historia”. Para Donald Trump, la derrota del pasado noviembre fue “el crimen del siglo”. Al parecer, el vocabulario de los dos hombres coincide porque el abrumador sentido de invencibilidad de ambos se desconcierta ante el proceso democrático.El domingo, Naftali Bennett, un nacionalista de derecha, asumirá el cargo de primer ministro de Israel, si el parlamento lo aprueba, pero el ataque furioso de Netanyahu contra su probable sucesor no muestra signos de amainar. Netanyahu dijo que existe una conspiración del “Estado profundo”.Netanyahu acusa a Bennett de ejecutar una “liquidación del país”. Un “gobierno de capitulación” es lo que espera a Israel después de una elección “robada”, dice. En cuanto a los medios, supuestamente están tratando de silenciarlo a través del “fascismo total”.Aunque parece que finalmente se producirá una transición democrática y pacífica, nada es seguro en Israel.Los ataques del partido de Netanyahu, Likud, contra el pequeño partido de Bennett, Yamina, han sido tan atroces que algunos políticos de Yamina han necesitado escoltas. Idit Silman, una representante de Yamina en la Knéset, el parlamento israelí, dijo en una entrevista en Canal 13 que un manifestante afuera de su casa le había dicho que estaba dolido por lo que estaba pasando su familia y agregó: “Pero no te preocupes, en la primera oportunidad que tengamos, te mataremos”.Naftali Bennett en la Knéset, el parlamento de Israel, el lunesFoto de consorcio de Maya AlleruzzoLa apoteosis de los métodos intransigentes de Netanyahu ha dejado la violencia en el aire. Los eventos del 6 de enero en Estados Unidos, cuando una turba incitada por Trump irrumpió en el Capitolio, no están lejos de la mente de los israelíes.“Durante 12 años, Netanyahu se convenció de que cualquier otra persona que gobernara Israel constituiría una amenaza para su existencia”, dijo Dahlia Scheindlin, una analista política. “Sus tácticas enérgicas presentan un desafío directo para una transición pacífica del poder”.La división y el miedo han sido las herramientas políticas preferidas de Netanyahu; y al igual que Estados Unidos, Israel está dividido, hasta el punto en que el jefe del servicio de seguridad interna de Israel, el Shin Bet, advirtió hace unos días sobre “un discurso extremadamente violento e incitador”. Fue una advertencia inusual.La policía ha dicho que no permitirá una marcha de corte nacionalista que había sido programada para que el jueves transitara por zonas de mayoría musulmana en la Ciudad Vieja de Jerusalén, pero las opiniones al respecto están aumentando entre los políticos de derecha después de que la marcha original del Día de Jerusalén fuera cancelada el mes pasado debido al lanzamiento de cohetes de Hamás.El martes, el gabinete de seguridad de Netanyahu decidió reprogramar la marcha para el próximo 15 de junio, a una ruta que se acordará con la policía. Netanyahu ve la marcha como un importante símbolo de la soberanía israelí.Celebrar la marcha sería jugar con fuego, como demostró la corta guerra con Hamás el mes pasado. Al parecer, ahora le corresponderá al gobierno de Bennett resolver ese problema.No se ha presentado ninguna evidencia que respalde las afirmaciones de que el futuro gobierno de Bennett es todo menos el producto legítimo de las elecciones libres y justas realizadas en marzo en Israel, el cuarto proceso electoral llevado a cabo desde 2019, mientras que Netanyahu, acusado de cargos de soborno y fraude, se ha esforzado en preservar el poder.Netanyahu define a la endeble coalición de ocho partidos de Bennett, que van desde partidos de extrema derecha a partidos de izquierda, como un “peligroso” gobierno de izquierda. Pero no fue la izquierda la que derrotó al primer ministro.Son políticos de derecha como Bennet y Gideon Saar, el futuro ministro de Justicia, quienes se convencieron de que Netanyahu se había convertido en una amenaza para la democracia israelí.Hace tres meses los carteles electorales en Jerusalén mostraban a Netanyahu, a la derecha, y a sus rivales, Gideon Saar, Naftali Bennett y Yair Lapid.Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHaciendo referencia al suicidio masivo de judíos que se negaron a someterse al yugo romano en Masada, durante un discurso en el que explicaba su decisión de liderar un gobierno alternativo, Bennett dijo que Netanyahu “quiere llevarse consigo a todo el campo nacional y a todo el país a su propia Masada”.Fue una imagen extraordinaria, especialmente del exjefe de gabinete de Netanyahu, y captó la creciente impresión entre muchos israelíes de que el primer ministro estaba decidido, a cualquier precio, a usar la supervivencia política como herramienta para detener el proceso penal en su contra.“Debería haber renunciado cuando surgió la acusación en 2019”, dijo Yuval Shany, profesor de Derecho en la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén y exdecano de su Facultad de Derecho. “Cualquier político razonable habría dimitido. En cambio, se apresuró a atacar el poder judicial. A la larga, pareció que su principal objetivo político era lograr la inmunidad ante un acuerdo para su enjuiciamiento”.En otras palabras, lo personal, es decir mantenerse fuera de la cárcel, se había convertido en algo primordial para Netanyahu. Tanto es así que estaba dispuesto a socavar las instituciones fundamentales del Estado de derecho y la democracia, como la Corte Suprema, un poder judicial independiente y una prensa libre. En este sentido, los arrebatos de los últimos días han sido más una culminación que algo nuevo..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Se convirtió en un político que haría todo lo posible, sin limitaciones”, dijo Shany.Está en compañía de otros líderes conocidos. Netanyahu, cuya inesperada victoria electoral en 2015 le dio una nueva sensación de omnipotencia, estableció vínculos estrechos con Viktor Orbán, el primer ministro húngaro, y con Trump. Netanyahu se sintió atraído por mandatarios de todo el mundo que tenían la intención de centralizar el poder en nuevos modelos antiliberales.Netanyahu y Trump en la Casa Blanca, el año pasado. Para ambos políticos ha sido difícil aceptar que sus derrotas electorales puedan explicarse por cualquier cosa que no sea un fraude.Doug Mills/The New York TimesLo que Netanyahu necesitaba, durante todas esas elecciones en Israel, era una mayoría lo suficientemente fuerte como para cambiar las leyes fundamentales del país con el propósito de hacer ilegal el enjuiciamiento a un primer ministro que esté en el cargo y quitarle a la Corte Suprema el poder de derogar esa legislación.Nunca obtuvo esa mayoría.“No hay duda de que quería reducir y minimizar la autoridad de revisión judicial de la Corte Suprema sobre la legislación de la Knéset y las decisiones administrativas de los órganos gubernamentales”, dijo Yohanan Plesner, presidente del Instituto de la Democracia de Israel. “Pero los controles y contrapesos de nuestra joven democracia están intactos”.Este domingo, es probable que esos controles y contrapesos lleven a Israel a un cambio democrático de gobierno. Pero Israel, a diferencia de Estados Unidos, es una democracia parlamentaria más que presidencial. Netanyahu no irá a un refugio soleado junto a un campo de golf. Como presidente de Likud, ejercerá un poder considerable.“No desaparecerá y no se callará”, dijo Merav Michaeli, líder del Partido Laborista, miembro de la nueva coalición. “Y llevará mucho tiempo reparar el daño”.El gobierno entrante está revisando la legislación que establecería un límite de dos mandatos para un primer ministro y obligaría a cualquiera que haya dirigido el país durante ocho años a pasar cuatro años fuera de la Knéset. Esto muestra cómo la democracia israelí se ha visto sacudida por los 15 años de Netanyahu en el poder.Merav Michaeli, dirigente del Partido Laborista de Israel e integrante de la coalición anti-Netanyahu, en una conferencia celebrada hace tres meses cerca de Tel AvivJack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNir Orbach, uno de los miembros del partido de derecha de Bennett que ha sido atacado por el Likud y que es objeto de presiones para cambiar de opinión sobre el apoyo a la nueva coalición, publicó su opinión en Facebook:“No es una decisión simple, pero responde a la realidad de esta vida en la que nos levantamos cada mañana con más de 700 días de inestabilidad gubernamental, una crisis civil, discursos violentos, y una sensación de caos, como al borde de la guerra civil”.Esa publicación es una buena expresión del agotamiento israelí ante la lucha retorcida de Netanyahu por la supervivencia política.Michaeli explicó: “Netanyahu ha estado erosionando la democracia de Israel durante mucho tiempo”. Haciendo referencia al asesinato de Yitzhak Rabin en 1995, continuó: “Recuerde, aquí tuvimos a un primer ministro asesinado. Estamos en una lucha constante por el temperamento y el alma de Israel. Pero prevaleceremos”.Los próximos días pondrán a prueba esa afirmación. Bennett instó a Netanyahu a “dejarse llevar” y abandonar su política de “tierra arrasada”. Pero esperar una salida cortés del primer ministro parece tan descabellado como habría sido esperarla del expresidente estadounidense, quien también afirmó que su derrota solo podía ser un robo.Roger Cohen es el jefe de la oficina de París del Times. Fue columnista de Opinión de 2009 a 2020. Ha trabajado para el Times durante más de 30 años y ha sido corresponsal extranjero y editor extranjero. Criado en Sudáfrica y Gran Bretaña, es estadounidense naturalizado. @NYTimesCohen More

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      For Netanyahu, like Trump, Only ‘Fraud’ Can Explain His Defeat

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      Israel’s democratic transition is set for Sunday, but nothing is certain amid the prime minister’s scorched-earth campaign to wreck his opponents’ coalition.TEL AVIV — For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is witnessing “the greatest election fraud in the history of the country.” For Donald Trump, defeat last November was “the crime of the century.” The two men’s language overlaps, it seems, because their overwhelming sense of invincibility is confounded by democratic process.Naftali Bennett, a right-wing nationalist, will take office as Israel’s prime minister Sunday, if approved by parliament, but Mr. Netanyahu’s raging assault on his likely successor shows no sign of relenting. He has said there is a “deep state” conspiracy.Mr. Netanyahu accuses Mr. Bennett of conducting a “fire sale on the country.” A “government of capitulation” awaits Israel after a “stolen” election, he says. As for the media, it is supposedly trying to silence him through “total fascism.”Although it appears that a peaceful democratic transition in Israel will take place, nothing is certain.Attacks by Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party on Mr. Bennett’s small Yamina party have been so vicious that some Yamina politicians have needed security details. Idit Silman, a Yamina representative in the Knesset, or parliament, said in an interview on Channel 13 TV that a demonstrator outside her home had told her he was pained by what her family was going through, “but don’t worry, at the first chance we get, we’ll slaughter you.”Naftali Bennett on Monday at the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.Pool photo by Maya AlleruzzoThe apotheosis of Mr. Netanyahu’s whatever-it-takes methods has left violence in the air. The events of Jan. 6 in the United States, when a Trump-incited mob stormed the Capitol, are not far from Israelis’ minds.“Over a dozen years, Mr. Netanyahu convinced himself that anyone else ruling Israel would constitute an existential threat,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst. “His strong-arm tactics present a direct challenge to a peaceful transition of power.”Division and fear have been Mr. Netanyahu’s preferred political tools; and like America, Israel is split, to the point that the head of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, warned a few days ago of “extremely violent and inciting discourse.” It was an unusual warning.The police have said they will not allow a nationalist march that had been scheduled Thursday through Muslim-majority areas of Jerusalem’s Old City, but feelings over it are running high among right-wing politicians after the original Jerusalem Day march last month was canceled because of Hamas rocket fire.Mr. Netanyahu’s security cabinet decided Tuesday to reschedule the march, on a route to be agreed with the police, for next Tuesday, June 15. Mr. Netanyahu sees the march as an important symbol of Israeli sovereignty.To hold the march would be playing with fire, as the short war with Hamas last month demonstrated. The issue, it appears, will now fall to the Bennett government to resolve.No evidence has been produced to back claims that Mr. Bennett’s prospective new government is anything but the legitimate product of Israel’s free and fair March election, the fourth since 2019 as Mr. Netanyahu, indicted on bribery and fraud charges, has scrambled to preserve power.Mr. Netanyahu calls Mr. Bennett’s tenuous eight-party coalition, ranging from far-right to left wing parties, a “dangerous” leftist government. But it is not the left that defeated the prime minister.It is politicians on the right like Mr. Bennet and Gideon Saar, the prospective justice minister, who became convinced that Mr. Netanyahu had become a threat to Israeli democracy.Election billboards in Jerusalem three months ago showed Mr. Netanyahu on the right, and his rivals, Gideon Saar, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAlluding to the mass suicide at Masada of Jews who refused to submit to the Roman yoke, Mr. Bennett said in a speech explaining his decision to head an alternative government that Mr. Netanyahu “wants to take with him the entire national camp and the entire country to his own private Masada.”It was an extraordinary image, especially from Mr. Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, and it captured the growing impression among many Israelis that the prime minister was determined, at whatever price, to leverage political survival into stopping the criminal process against him.“He should have quit when the indictment came out in 2019,” said Yuval Shany, a law professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former dean of its Law School. “Any reasonable politician would have stepped down. Instead, he went full throttle against the judiciary. In the end it seemed his main political aim was arriving at an immunity from prosecution arrangement.”In other words, the personal — staying out of jail — had become paramount for Mr. Netanyahu. So much so that he was prepared to erode core institutions of the rule of law and democracy, like the Supreme Court, an independent judiciary and a free press. In this sense, the outbursts of recent days have been a culmination rather than a departure.“He became a politician who would go to any lengths, without limits,” Mr. Shany said.He had prominent company. Mr. Netanyahu, whose unpredicted 2015 electoral victory gave him a new sense of being all-powerful, formed close bonds with Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, and with Mr. Trump. He was drawn to leaders across the world intent on centralizing power in new, illiberal models.Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Trump at the White House last year. Both men have found it difficult to accept that an electoral loss could be explained by anything except fraud.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhat Mr. Netanyahu needed, through all those Israeli elections, was a majority strong enough to change Israel’s Basic Law to make prosecution of a prime minister in office impossible, and to take from the Supreme Court the power to strike such legislation down.He never quite got that majority.“There’s no doubt he wanted to narrow and minimize the authority of judicial review of the Supreme Court over both Knesset legislation and the administrative decisions of government bodies,” said Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “But the checks and balances of our young democracy are intact.”Those checks and balances are likely to get Israel to Sunday and a democratic change in government. But Israel, unlike the United States, is a parliamentary rather than a presidential democracy. Mr. Netanyahu will not disappear to some sunny retreat beside a golf course. As chairman of Likud, he will wield considerable power..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“He is not going away, and he will not be quiet,” said Merav Michaeli, the leader of the Labor Party, a member of the new coalition. “And it will take a long time to repair the damage.”The incoming government is reviewing legislation that would set a two-term limit for a prime minister and oblige anyone who has led the country for eight years to spend four years out of the Knesset. It signals how Israeli democracy has been jolted by Mr. Netanyahu’s total of 15 years in power.Merav Michaeli, leader of Israel’s Labor Party, a member of the anti-Netanyahu coalition, at a conference three months ago near Tel Aviv.Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNir Orbach, one of the members of Mr. Bennett’s right-wing party who has come under withering attack from Likud and been pressured to change his mind about supporting the new coalition, posted an explanation of his thinking on Facebook:“It is not a simple decision, but it is obligated by the reality of life in which we get up every morning, over 700 days of governmental instability, in a civil crisis, in a violent discourse, in a sense of chaos, on the brink of civil war.”The post was as good an expression of Israeli exhaustion at Mr. Netanyahu’s contorted fight for survival as any.Ms. Michaeli said: “Netanyahu has been eroding Israel’s democracy for a very long time.” Alluding to the 1995 killing of Yitzhak Rabin, she continued: “Remember, we had a prime minister assassinated here. We are in an ongoing fight for the character and soul of Israel. But we will prevail.”The next few days will test that assertion. Mr. Bennett urged Mr. Netanyahu to “let go” and abandon his “scorched earth” policy. But to expect a gracious exit from the prime minister appears as far-fetched as was expecting it from the American president who also claimed that defeat could only be theft. More