Netanyahu turns Israel's government into a personal shield

By Aoife Gallagher · Reporting from Dublin · October 26, 2026

As Israelis prepare to vote, Benjamin Netanyahu is turning the state machinery into a personal shield to evade accountability and cling to power.

Benjamin Netanyahu is not running for the premiership of a state; he is running for a shield. At 77, the incumbent leader of the Likud party has turned the Israeli government into a personal legal defense fund. He has spent years eroding the guardrails of democracy to ensure no judge can touch him. Now, as 7,331,981 eligible citizens prepare to vote on Tuesday, the stakes reach beyond security. They are about whether a leader can use a national catastrophe to erase his own failures. Netanyahu is wrong to treat the survival of the state as a synonym for his own political survival.

The leverage of a manufactured crisis

The campaign is framed as a choice between strength and failure. For his supporters, as political analyst Dahlia Sheindlin tells NBC News, Netanyahu is the strong prime minister who fought back. To his critics, he is the leader who failed to prevent the October 7 attacks and refuses to take accountability. On that day, 1,195 people were killed. Attackers took 251 hostages into Gaza. Netanyahu has responded by pivoting toward a hardline security narrative. By expanding the war to other fronts, he hopes to make himself indispensable.

The opposition offers a different path. Gadi Eisenkot, the 66-year-old former chief of staff, leads the centrist Yashar party. Eisenkot has criticized strategic failures and supports a long-term ceasefire. He vows to remove Hamas from power within 18 months of taking office. He is fighting for the principle that military strength requires political honesty.

The machinery of survival

Israel’s proportional representation system is a playground for a man who trades in chaos. To govern, a coalition needs 61 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. Parties must hit a 3.25% threshold to enter the room.

Israel held elections five times in recent years. This cycle of instability, as seen in the Israeli legislative elections (2019-2022), reflects a deep fracture where a leader's survival becomes the primary goal of the state. Netanyahu uses the threat of a collapsed government to keep his coalition in line. This is the same logic behind the Israeli judicial reform, where legislation limited judiciary independence as a leader attempted to dismantle institutional checks to avoid personal accountability for legal failures. Netanyahu is currently on trial for fraud, breach of trust and bribery. He also faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes. For him, the law is an obstacle to remove.

Who pays for the gamble

While Netanyahu plays political chess, ordinary people pay the price. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, about 74,500 people have died in Gaza since October 7. A United Nations commission recently raised allegations of genocide against Israel. Netanyahu has opposed an independent inquiry into the October 7 failures. Instead, he relies on a state of permanent emergency as cover against indictment.

The institutional cost is just as severe. By aligning with ultra-nationalist parties like Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism, Netanyahu shifted the political spectrum to the right. Even his critics, as noted by SBS News, face a toxic environment regarding diplomatic concessions. He has poisoned the well of diplomacy to ensure no alternative to his leadership can take hold.

The result is a country on a knife-edge as voters head to more than 12,000 polling stations. President Isaac Herzog will soon face the task of forming a government from the outcome. Given the tight polling between the Likud and Yashar blocs, gridlock remains likely. Netanyahu will try to cling to power as head of a caretaker government. But the shield is cracking. If he loses office, the precedent of Ehud Olmert suggests legal walls will close in quickly. Once executive immunity vanishes, corruption trials accelerate. Netanyahu is not fighting for Israel's future; he is fighting to stay out of a cell.

Netanyahu turns Israel's government into a personal shield

The leverage of a manufactured crisis

The machinery of survival

Who pays for the gamble

Sources