JERUSALEM: A visibly frantic Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the fight of his political life as the country heads to national elections for the second time this year.
With Netanyahu locked in a razor tight race and facing the likelihood of criminal corruption charges, a decisive victory in Tuesday’s vote may be the only thing to keep him out of the courtroom. A repeat of the deadlock in April’s election, or a victory by challenger Benny Gantz, could spell the end of the career of the man who has led the country for the past decade.
Netanyahu’s daily campaign stunts have helped him set the national agenda — a tactic the media-savvy Israeli leader has perfected throughout his three decades in national politics. But it may well be the things he can’t control — including a former political ally turned rival and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip — that bring him down.
Throughout the abbreviated campaign, Netanyahu has seemed to create new headlines at will. One day he is jetting off for meetings with world leaders. The next, he claims to unveil a previously undisclosed Iranian nuclear site. Then he vows to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. Nearly every day, he issues unfounded warnings about the country’s Arab minority “stealing” the election, drawing accusations of incitement and racism.
“Netanyahu is always worried. That’s why he has survived this long,” said Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist at the Haaretz newspaper and author of a recent biography of Netanyahu.
“Every election campaign he enters convinced that he can lose, and that’s how he fights it, with his back to the wall,” he said.
By many counts, the strategy has worked. Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, has dominated the political discourse during a campaign that is seen as a referendum on his rule. His opponents, meanwhile, have been forced to react to his ever-shifting tactics.
Netanyahu has turned to a familiar playbook — presenting himself as a global statesman who is uniquely qualified to lead the country while also portraying himself as the underdog, lashing out at perceived domestic enemies who he claims are conspiring against him.
During a Channel 12 TV interview late Saturday, Netanyahu appeared distressed and combative. He smirked, shook his head and raised his voice as he accused the media of “inciting” against him, angrily rejected the legal case against him and issued dire warnings that his Likud party will lose. “Victory is not in our pocket,” he said.
At the same time, he claimed the country understands that only he can lead. His campaign ads portray him as being in a “different league” and show him embracing his friend, President Donald Trump, as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin, India’s Narendra Modi and other world leaders. Last week, Netanyahu rushed to Sochi, Russia, for talks with Putin about Iran.
“The public is saying, ‘We understand that you are a world-class leader,’” he told Channel 12.
Echoing Trump, Netanyahu routinely lashes out at the media, the judiciary, prosecutors and other alleged foes. But it has been his attacks on Israel’s Arab minority that have caused the most controversy. Netanyahu has long targeted Israeli Arabs to rally his working-class, nationalist base — implying that they are a fifth column threatening the county.
In the current campaign, he has taken these tactics to a new level. He sparked uproar by leading a failed effort to allow activists to film voters at polling stations, claiming without evidence that they were needed to prevent fraud in Arab districts.
That was followed by a message on his Facebook page calling on voters to prevent the establishment of a government that includes “Arabs who want to destroy us all.”
Facebook determined the post violated its hate speech policy and sanctioned the page for 24 hours. Netanyahu said the post was a staffer’s mistake and had been removed.
Ayman Odeh, leader of the main Arab faction in parliament, accused Netanyahu of fearmongering. During a parliamentary session on the voting booth cameras, Odeh mocked Netanyahu by approaching the prime minister and pointing his cellphone camera at him, sparking a brief scuffle with other lawmakers.
“He always looks for an enemy. Always,” said Odeh. “This man offers no hope. He only uses fear.”
Days before the election, the race appears too close to call. Polls published over the weekend showed Netanyahu’s Likud and Gantz’s Blue and White neck and neck. Both parties fall far short of a majority in the 120-seat parliament, with their “blocs” of smaller allied parties also evenly divided.
The stakes are especially high for Netanyahu. Israel’s attorney general has recommended that Netanyahu be indicted in three corruption cases, pending a hearing scheduled in October.
Although Netanyahu denies all charges, it is widely believed that he hopes to be able to form a narrow coalition of hard-line and religious parties willing to grant him immunity from prosecution.
If he falls short, he could find himself in the opposition or forced into a partnership with centrist rivals who have no interest in protecting him from prosecutors.
“He has no limits, because his only goal today is to avoid going to trial,” said Stav Shaffir, a candidate with the leftist Democratic Union party. “He’s afraid. But the thing is his fear is now used to threaten Israeli democracy. He’s tearing apart Israeli society,” she said.
This week’s election was triggered by Avigdor Lieberman, a longtime ally turned rival who refused to join Netanyahu’s coalition last April, robbing him of a majority, because of what he said was excessive influence by Jewish ultra-Orthodox religious parties.
Lieberman is once again playing hard to get. His Yisrael Beitenu party has emerged as a likely kingmaker, and he is demanding the formation of a secular unity government.
Lieberman also has repeatedly seized on the prime minister’s failure to stop rocket fire launched by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
Despite Netanyahu’s attempts to divert attention from the issue, he was embarrassed last week when air raid sirens disrupted a campaign rally in southern Israel and he was whisked away to safety. The clip spread quickly on social media and was repeatedly played on Israeli TV stations.
Even Netanyahu’s much-hyped friendship with Trump has not delivered major results. During the first campaign early this year, Trump gave Netanyahu a boost by inviting him to the White House, where he recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war.
This time around, Trump has instead alarmed the Israelis by declaring his readiness to meet with the president of Iran, Israel’s archenemy, and then firing National Security Adviser John Bolton, an Iran hawk who was a strong Israel supporter in the White House.
“It seems that the gift that never stops giving, Donald Trump, has stopped cooperating with Netanyahu at the most critical junction in time,” columnist Ben Caspit wrote in the Maariv daily.
“But no one should eulogize Netanyahu just yet,” he added. “He still has a few days left. More dramatic announcements still lie ahead.”
Late on Saturday, Trump delivered a small election gift, announcing on Twitter that he was exploring a possible defense pact with Israel.
While less dramatic than the Golan announcement last spring, Netanyahu happily accepted the gesture, thanking his “dear friend” and trumping it as “historic.”
Embattled Israeli PM fights for survival in do-over election
Embattled Israeli PM fights for survival in do-over election
- During a Channel 12 TV interview late Saturday, Netanyahu appeared distressed and combative
- Last week, Netanyahu rushed to Sochi, Russia, for talks with Putin about Iran
Palestinian fighters battle Israeli forces around Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital
- Israeli army continues to operate around the hospital complex in Gaza City after storming it more than a week ago
The Israeli army said it continued to operate around the hospital complex in Gaza City after storming it more than a week ago. Its forces had killed around 200 gunmen since the start of the operation “while preventing harm to civilians, patients, medical teams, and medical equipment,” it said.
Gaza’s health ministry said wounded people and patients were being held inside an administration building in Al-Shifa that was not equipped to provide them with health care. Five patients had died since the Israeli raid began due to shortages of food, water and medical care, the Hamas-run ministry said.
Al-Shifa, the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital before the war, had been one of the few health care facilities even partially operational in north Gaza before the latest fighting. It had also been housing displaced civilians.
Unverified footage on social media showed its surgery unit blackened by flames and nearby apartments on fire or destroyed.
The armed wings of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups said in a statement they “bombed, with a barrage of mortar shells, gatherings of Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of the Al-Shifa Complex” in a joint operation.
Islamic Jihad targeted an Israeli tank with an anti-tank rocket outside the hospital, it said in another statement. The Israeli military said militants fired at its troops from inside and outside the ER building.
Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants who use civilian buildings, including apartment blocks and hospitals, for cover. Hamas denies doing so.
At least 32,552 Palestinians have been killed and 74,980 wounded in Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, the territory’s health ministry said on Thursday.
Thousands more dead are believed to be buried under rubble and over 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is displaced, many at risk of famine.
The war erupted after Hamas militants broke through the border and rampaged through communities in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies.
TWO MORE HOSPITALS BESIEGED
Israeli forces continued to blockade Al-Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis, while several other areas in the southern Gaza city came under Israeli fire, residents said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said seven people working for the organization arrested in a raid on Al-Amal hospital on Feb. 9 had been released after 47 days in Israeli prisons.
Among them was the director of ambulance and emergency services in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Abu Musabeh. Eight members of the association were still being detained, it said in a statement.
Israel said soldiers from its Commando Brigade had arrested dozens of Palestinian militants in the Al-Amal area and discovered explosives and dozens of Kalashnikov-type weapons.
The World Health Organization said Al-Amal Hospital had ceased to function due to fighting, leaving just 10 of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip partially operational.
“Once more, WHO demands an immediate end to attacks on hospitals in Gaza, and calls for protection of health staff, patients, and civilians,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X on Thursday.
In Rafah, where over a million people have been sheltering, health officials said an Israeli airstrike on a house killed eight people and wounded others.
Israel says it plans a ground offensive into Rafah, where it believes most Hamas fighters are now sheltering. Its closest ally and main arms supplier the United States opposes such an assault, arguing it would cause too much harm to civilians who have sought refuge there.
Israel government shaken by ultra-Orthodox conscription row
- Military service is obligatory for all young Israelis – 32 months for men, and two years for women
- But almost all the ultra-Orthodox have been able to escape it
JERUSALEM: A legal row over controversial exemptions from compulsory military service for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews had the country’s right-wing coalition government scurrying to find a compromise Thursday.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara sent shock waves through the government — which is reliant on ultra-Orthodox parties — declaring Wednesday there was no legal framework to the continuing exemptions.
This means that ultra-Orthodox will be liable to be called up from April 1, as Israel’s war against Hamas militants rages in the Gaza Strip.
The government has set itself a Thursday deadline to strike a deal.
With the war in Gaza, pressure has increased on the country’s large and growing ultra-orthodox community who have long been spared military service which is compulsory for everyone else.
After several legal challenges to the exemptions, the Supreme Court gave the government until Wednesday to draw up a new conscription bill.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been unable to get agreement on the deeply divisive issue, with his ultra-Orthodox allies fiercely opposed to conscription for their community.
The government has asked for a short extension to the Supreme Court deadline in the hope of formulating a deal.
The coalition depends on two large ultra-Orthodox parties.
Last year the government voted through unprecedented funding equivalent to just over $1 billion for orthodox religious schools, or yeshivas.
Netanyahu is working, at any cost, on “avoiding an early election” that would benefit Benny Gantz, a centrist member of his war cabinet, Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, has said.
Recent polls suggest that if there were an election, Gantz’s party would win the largest number of seats.
Before the war in Gaza, the religious parties had also supported Netanyahu’s controversial judicial reforms, in the hopes of further extending military exemptions.
The judicial revamp sparked months of protests, often by tens of thousands of Israelis.
But Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in February announced a reform of military service that would include the ultra-Orthodox. Some Israeli media perceived Gallant’s move as a challenge to Netanyahu. Both men belong to the same Likud party.
Military service is obligatory for all young Israelis — 32 months for men, and two years for women.
But almost all the ultra-Orthodox have been able to escape it, with 66,000 members of the community excused from military service last year alone.
Jewish men who study the Torah full-time in religious schools have long been granted an annual deferment from military service until the age of 26, at which point they become exempt.
Young ultra-Orthodox women are automatically exempt.
The exemptions date from Israel’s founding in 1948, and were meant to allow a group of 400 young people to study sacred texts and preserve Jewish traditions, much of which had been lost during the Holocaust.
But today’s ultra-Orthodox number 1.3 million people, according to the Israel Democracy Institute — bolstered by a fertility rate of more than six children per woman, compared with the national average of 2.5.
Most ultra-Orthodox want the exemptions to be extended to all religious students, saying serving in the military is incompatible with their values.
US says it downed four Yemen rebel drones in Red Sea
- US military says the unmanned aerial systems presented threat to merchant vessels
- It says the action was taken to protect freedom of navigation in international waters
WASHINGTON: The United States military said Wednesday it had downed four drones launched by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen aimed at a US warship in the Red Sea.
US Central Command said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, that its forces had “engaged and destroyed four long-range unmanned aerial systems” at around 2 am Sanaa time (2300 GMT), adding there were no injuries or damage reported to US or coalition ships.
“It was determined these weapons presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region,” the statement said.
“These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for US Navy and merchant vessels,” it added.
In November, the Houthis launched a campaign of drone and missile strikes against vessels in the Red Sea, an area vital for world trade, in professed solidarity with Palestinians during Israel’s war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
US and British forces have responded with strikes against the Houthis, who have since declared American and British interests to be legitimate targets as well.
Outpouring of anger as thousands of Jordanians protest at Israeli embassy
- Surge in protests sparked by claims of Israeli soldiers raping, executing Palestinian women
- Many of Jordan’s 12m citizens are descendants of displaced Palestinians
AMMAN: Thousands of Jordanians marched to the Israeli embassy in Amman on Wednesday for the fourth consecutive day in an outpouring of anger at Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.
“The people demand the end of Wadi Araba,” some chanted, referring to Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel.
Protestors, who began gathering at the Kaloti mosque around 10 p.m., were met by hundreds of security personal and military tanks in anticipation of the planned march to the heavily fortified Israeli embassy nearby.
Ambulances and medical teams were stationed as a precaution in the wake of days marked by violent confrontations between protestors and riot police.
Jordan has had some of the largest peaceful protests in the region since October, with regular marches in downtown Amman drawing hundreds of thousands of people on consecutive Fridays.
However, several demonstrators on Wednesday told Arab News the recent surge of daily gatherings near the Israel embassy were triggered by claims by Jamila Al-Hissi, a Palestinian woman, who told Al Jazeera Arabic of Israeli soldiers torturing, raping and executing women inside Al-Shifa hospital.
There have been reports that Al-Hissa’s claimed were denied on March 25 by a former Al Jazeera executive, who referenced a purported Hamas investigation.
Jordanians have felt the impact of the war in Gaza deeply, where Israel’s relentless bombing has killed over 32,000 Palestinians.
Many of Jordan’s 12 million citizens are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.
“I’m devastated that we haven’t been able to help Gaza. The least that we can do is to be here so that our brothers and sisters in Palestine know that we’re standing with them,” 29-year-old Haneen Ashour told Arab News.
Popular chants like “No Zionist embassy on Jordanian soil” reflect the widespread public opposition to diplomatic normalization with Israel, seen as a betrayal of the Palestinians suffering under occupation.
Despite the large turnout and passionate demonstrations, some protesters have expressed doubt about the impact of their actions.
“This is our duty and it’s the least that we can do, but to be honest with you I don’t (know if) these protests are making any difference. If they were, we wouldn’t be 171 days into the war in Gaza,” 24-year-old Ammar Najar said.
Several protesters were beaten in previous days, and dozens were arrested as they attempted to break a heavy police cordon around the embassy, witnesses said.
Jordan’s authorities allow protests but say they cannot tolerate any attempt to storm the embassy, instigate civic unrest or try to reach borders with the occupied West Bank or Israel.
Gun attack on school bus in West Bank wounds 3 Israelis: army
- Soldiers were pursuing the suspect
JERUSALEM: Medics and the army said three people including a boy were wounded in a gun attack Thursday that targeted a school bus near the city of Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
After reports that a militant fired toward “a number of vehicles,” soldiers were sent to the scene near the town of Al-Auja, the military said, adding that soldiers were pursuing the suspect.
The military confirmed a school bus had been targeted.
A 30-year-old man was in serious condition with gunshot wounds, while a 21-year-old man was less seriously wounded and a 13-year-old boy suffered shrapnel injuries, emergency services said.
Israeli public radio said the masked gunman started shooting at Israeli cars at around 7:00 a.m. local time, hitting a car and a school bus.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip in October. The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7 that left about 1,160 people dead.
More than 440 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank since the war broke out, according to the Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank.
At least 17 Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed in attacks there over the same period, say the Israeli authorities.