In a little more than a week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has reignited the war in Gaza, dismissed the head of Israel’s internal security agency, and moved to fire its highest legal official—all while pushing toward a political takeover of the judicial branch.
That Netanyahu is taking all of these actions at once is not a coincidence: He knows he faces immediate threats to his hold on power, and so he is taking desperate measures, regardless of the cost in lives and the risk to Israeli democracy.
The sudden wave of Israeli bombing raids on Gaza last Tuesday marked the collapse of the cease-fire-and-hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. Under that agreement, the two sides were supposed to exploit the pause in fighting to negotiate the next stage of the deal, including a permanent cease-fire and the release of the remaining Israeli hostages.
Why the failure to reach the second stage? To solely blame the huge gap between the negotiating positions of Israel and Hamas is tempting, but mistaken. The abyss was real—but negotiations to bridge it never began. Had Netanyahu actually been interested in reaching an agreement, he could have considered—or sought to improve—the proposal for Gaza’s future that Egypt and other Arab states put forward. That plan laid out a path, however uncertain, toward rebuilding Gaza and creating an alternative Palestinian government there.
But Netanyahu was most likely concerned less with resolving the conflict in Gaza than with preserving his government past March 31. Under Israeli law, if the current year’s budget isn’t approved by that date, Parliament’s term automatically ends and new elections must be held within 90 days. And polls consistently suggest that Netanyahu stands very little chance of reelection, as the parties that make up his coalition appear to fall far short of winning a majority again.
As of mid-March, however, Netanyahu couldn’t count on passing a budget in the 120-member Knesset. One of his partners, the far-right Jewish Power party, had bolted from the coalition after the hostage-and-cease-fire deal was signed in mid-January—with the party’s leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, declaring that it would return to the government only “if the war is resumed, with might” to bring a decisive victory. That left Netanyahu with a 62-member coalition—and two of those members were threatening to vote against the budget unless the government first passed an intensely unpopular law to restore a draft exemption for ultra-Orthodox men.
The stance of another extreme nationalist party, Religious Zionism, made the coalition even more fragile. When the hostage deal was reached, the party’s leader, Bezalel Smotrich, said that Religious Zionism was staying in the government only because Netanyahu had promised to resume intensive fighting “to achieve absolute victory” by “taking control over all of the Gaza Strip.” If Israel proceeded to the second stage of the deal, Smotrich’s party would leave, and the coalition would lose its parliamentary majority.
The first air attacks on Gaza last Tuesday took place before dawn. By the same evening, Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir had agreed on Jewish Power’s return to the government. The coalition appears safe. But some two dozen Israeli hostages who were reportedly still alive in the tunnels of Gaza are in immediate danger from their captors and from Israeli fire.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Gazans have reportedly been killed in the past week of Israeli attacks, with the proportion of civilians and combatants unknown. Sporadic missile attacks from Gaza, Yemen, and Lebanon again have Israelis dashing for shelter. The government hasn’t explained how it expects to reach the “absolute victory” that has so far eluded it. Hebrew-language media reports suggest that the goal is to restore an Israeli military government over much of the Strip. That’s a recipe for a war of attrition and Israeli casualties, as General Herzi Halevi—the recently replaced chief of staff—reportedly argued.
But the hard right will be satisfied, and the coalition succeeded in passing the budget this week, preventing new elections. No wonder that the former head of the Mossad, Tamir Pardo, declared at a huge anti-government rally in Tel Aviv the night after the fighting resumed, “The War for the Welfare of Netanyahu has begun.”
Yet Netanyahu faces another, potentially greater threat, in what’s known as Qatargate: The Shin Bet internal security agency and police are investigating an alleged financial connection between several of the prime minister’s closest aides and the government of Qatar, a key backer of Hamas. Netanyahu’s critics charge that he may well have fired Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar last week in an effort to shut down that investigation. It stands to reason that the cabinet vote this week to dismiss the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, could be similarly motivated.
Qatargate emerged in late November, when Haaretz reported that the Netanyahu associates Yonatan Urich and Yisrael (Srulik) Einhorn had conducted a public-relations campaign for Qatar in the lead-up to the 2022 World Cup in that country. The goal was to transform Qatar’s image from a backer of terror to a contributor to Middle East peace. Einhorn had been a consultant on five of Netanyahu’s election campaigns. In 2022, Urich was the spokesperson of Netanyahu’s Likud party, which was then briefly in the opposition. Today he is media adviser to the prime minister. (Urich denied the report; Einhorn’s PR firm called it “fake news.”)
The revelations about Urich and Einhorn’s work for Qatar did not immediately imply criminal activity. It resonated, though, because the two aides were already suspects in the leaking of a top-secret intelligence document to the German newspaper Bild, allegedly to deflect criticism of Netanyahu’s stonewalling of a hostage deal. Another Netanyahu spokesperson, Eli Feldstein, is under indictment for his alleged role in that leak.
Moreover, the Haaretz report suggested that two men with Netanyahu’s ear—one working daily with the prime minister—had financial ties to Qatar. And until October 7, 2023, Netanyahu was allowing Qatar to send suitcases of cash to Gaza to prop up the Hamas government there. The unanswered question was whether the two facts were connected.
Then, in early February, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Feldstein himself had done PR work for a foreign firm on behalf of Qatar, while serving as a spokesperson for Netanyahu. At the end of that month, Baharav-Miara announced a joint Shin Bet–police investigation of the affair.
Because of a gag order, little more is known of the inquiry, except this: Last Wednesday evening, Urich and Feldstein were taken in for interrogation. They are reportedly suspected of bribery, money laundering, and contact with a foreign agent. (Einhorn has been living in Serbia, beyond the reach of Israeli investigators.)
Nothing so far reported ties Netanyahu directly to the affair—except for his furious reaction. The night his aides were questioned, Netanyahu posted on X, “In America and in Israel, when a strong right wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will.”
The next night, the cabinet unanimously approved Netanyahu’s request to fire Bar, the Shin Bet chief. Several groups appealed the legality of this decision, and Baharav-Miara ruled that the dismissal must first be submitted to the same independent committee that originally approved Bar for the position. The cabinet ignored the attorney general’s ruling—and on Sunday voted no confidence in her as well, initiating her dismissal.
The timing of Bar’s firing suggests a possible connection to Qatargate. Bar had already acknowledged that he shared responsibility for the intelligence failure that allowed Hamas to attack on October 7. He had said that he planned to resign before the end of his term in 2026. But the investigation of Qatargate looked to be moving on a faster track than Bar’s plans, and Netanyahu may wish to appoint a replacement whose loyalty will belong to the prime minister, not the law.
The bid to dismiss Baharav-Miara would also be less surprising but for the timing. Baharav-Miara has been in constant conflict with the cabinet—not because she has stepped out of line, but because she has stood against the Netanyahu government’s moves to concentrate power in its hands. And yet, until now, Netanyahu has ignored ministers’ calls to dismiss her, apparently because he faces corruption charges and does not want to invite court intervention by firing the chief prosecutor. With Qatargate before him, however, he gave Justice Minister Yariv Levin the go-ahead to bring the no-confidence vote in the cabinet.
To all of that, add the continuing push for “judicial reform”: Tomorrow the Knesset is set to vote on legislation to change how judges are appointed in Israel and give greater power to politicians, especially those in the ruling coalition. This has been one of the government’s central goals since early 2023.
The timing of that parliamentary vote is not directly linked to Qatargate or the war. But it does have the effect of flooding the zone—of overwhelming the parliamentary opposition and the popular protest movement while they are focused on the war, the hostages, and the attacks on Bar and Baharav-Miara.
The next chapters of this story will play out partly in the courts and partly on the streets. The supreme court has already issued a temporary order freezing Bar’s dismissal. Cabinet ministers have declared that the government should ignore the court. Major business leaders have threatened a national shutdown in response. Street protests—against the war, for saving the hostages, for democracy—have swelled again, with massive rallies in Tel Aviv and near-constant demonstrations outside Netanyahu’s house in Jerusalem. What has become clear to many Israelis is that for the sake of his political survival, Netanyahu is prepared to make his country pay almost any price.
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