Netanyahu seeks re-election in Israel as ICC war crimes warrant shadows race
Israelis vote on October 27 in an election that pits the country's longest-serving prime minister against rivals united mainly by their opposition to him, Al Jazeera reports.
Israel's longest-serving prime minister is seeking another term in an election on October 27, while the International Criminal Court wants him on charges of war crimes in Gaza.
In late September, delegates walked out of the UN General Assembly in protest as Netanyahu took the podium. Undeterred and grinning, he shot back: "If there are any other moral cowards who haven't left the hall, please do so now."
For his supporters watching at home, Al Jazeera reported, it was exactly what they wanted to hear.
"When they see Netanyahu at the United Nations, that's what they want – it's hard for them to imagine anyone else doing that," his former aide Mitchell Barak told Al Jazeera. "For many in Israel, but not all, he's the only man that can truly lead Israel. He makes them proud to be Jewish."
On October 27, voters must choose between Netanyahu and an assortment of rivals unified by little other than their opposition to him. In the eyes of both supporters and opponents, as well as much of the world, he has become the face of modern Israel, according to Al Jazeera.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1949 to Benzion Netanyahu and Tzila Segal, he spent his early years between Israel and the United States. His father, a right-wing historian, held a profoundly pessimistic view of a world fundamentally opposed to the existence of Jews; his brother, Yonatan, was killed in 1976 leading a raid to rescue hijacked Israeli hostages in Entebbe, Uganda.
He was named deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy in Washington in 1982, became ambassador to the UN in 1984, and joined then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's cabinet as deputy foreign minister in 1988. In 1996 he became Israel's youngest prime minister, later serving a record 12-year tenure from 2009 to 2021 and returning to power in 2022 to lead the most far-right government in Israel's history.
Throughout his career he has faced growing accusations of deliberately engineering division to further his own political and personal ends.
"Netanyahu is the perfect encapsulation of Israel's political polarisation," political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg told Al Jazeera, describing him as "always" being in "campaigning mode." He said Netanyahu "is very good at building coalitions that reflect public opinion" and at "steering that opinion in his own direction."
Under his leadership, Al Jazeera reported, Israel has continued to move to the right, away from the path towards a two-state solution set in motion by Rabin. Large parts of the electorate have grown accustomed to the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and to the war in Gaza that followed the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, for which many still blame Netanyahu over alleged security failures, along with the wars waged at his direction.
In July 2018, his coalition passed the Nation-State Law, declaring the right to national self-determination "unique to the Jewish people," stripping Arabic of its status as an official language and making the development of Jewish settlements a national value. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded 1,291 settler attacks in the West Bank in 2023 and 1,835 in 2025, and says at least 1,071 Palestinians, including 233 children, have been killed there by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7, 2023 — violence a senior UN official described as having "virtually no accountability."
His current coalition has placed some of Israel's most controversial figures at the heart of power, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, convicted of incitement to racism and support for a "terrorist" group, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is explicitly pro-settlement.
"Netanyahu didn't create the racism and fascism in Israel, but he's helped it," outgoing Hadash parliamentarian Aida Touma-Sliman told Al Jazeera. "He's smart. He knows exactly what he's doing when he includes people like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir in his government, and he knows the outcome of those appointments."
"He thrives in chaos," Barak said.
Flaschenberg said that for Netanyahu's supporters he "remains Israel's only possible leader," while for his opponents "he's the devil. He's corruption personified, responsible for everything leading up to October 7 and everything afterwards."
The analyst suggested Netanyahu's ultimate legacy may still lie ahead, invoking former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. "That's Netanyahu's legacy," Flaschenberg said.
