Netanyahu bids for a comeback with help of far-right in Israel election

TEL AVIV — Just over a year after being ousted, former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is attempting a political comeback in Tuesday’s election with the help of a surging far-right party led by one of the country’s most extreme politicians.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, stayed in power with the support of religious and right-wing parties. But his 15 years in office were brought to an end in 2021 by an unusual coalition of opposition parties who united to unseat him. 

That coalition collapsed in June amid ideological differences, plunging Israel into its fifth election in less than four years — and opening the door to a potential return by Netanyahu, 73, who is also standing trial on corruption charges.

“I’ll replace this government, I hope — although nothing is guaranteed,” he told NBC News in an interview Oct. 18.

Netanyahu’s hopes of forming a 61-seat majority government rest in part on the support of the far-right Jewish Power party (Otzma Yehudit). 

Once shunned from Israel’s political mainstream, Jewish Power and other far-right parties are enjoying unprecedented popularity heading into this election. 

Most polls show them winning up to 10% of the seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. If that projection holds, it would make them the third-largest faction in parliament and give them significant leverage in potential coalition negotiations with Netanyahu. 

It would likely also mean a Cabinet post for Itamar Ben Gvir, the firebrand leader of Jewish Power, who among other things supports the deportation of Arab citizens who are deemed to be “disloyal” to Israel.

The 46-year-old first caught national attention in 1995 when, as a far-right activist protesting against the Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, he broke a hood ornament off the car of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. 

“We got to his car, and we’ll get to him,” he told a television interviewer at the time. Weeks later, Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing extremist. 

Ben Gvir was never implicated in the killing and has since said he meant only to shout at Rabin.

He went on to pursue a legal career built mainly on defending Jewish extremists accused of attacking Palestinians. And he built up a criminal record of his own.

In 2007, Ben Gvir was convicted of supporting a terrorist group and inciting racism after he held anti-Arab signs at a protest. 

Yishai Fleisher, a spokesman for Ben Gvir, told NBC News in a recent interview that Ben Gvir has since moderated his views. 

“He says, ‘I’ve grown up, I now have kids, I want to be a practical person.’ He’s a man that has been really a phenomenal trial attorney in the Supreme Court of Israel. He’s a person who works within the system,” Fleisher said.

Twice in the last year, Ben Gvir has pulled a gun during confrontations with Palestinians. He claims both instances were in self-defense. In a concession to the optics of mainstream Israeli politics, Ben Gvir now urges his supporters to shout “death to terrorists” rather than “death to Arabs.”  

His policies center around a harsher approach to the nearly 2 million Palestinians who live inside Israel and hold Israeli citizenship, as well as Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. 

His flagship proposal is the deportation of Palestinian citizens deemed “disloyal” to Israel — including some democratically elected Arab politicians who sit alongside him in parliament. 

“Israel is first and foremost the Jewish state and it’s created to defend the Jewish state. It’s not really created to be a democracy,” Fleisher said when asked about the policy. 

One of the Arab lawmakers Ben Gvir has threatened to deport is Ahmad Tibi, a veteran member of parliament. Tibi told NBC News he did not think Ben Gvir would stop at deporting lawmakers.

“When he is talking about me and my colleagues, expelling them to Syria or to Gaza, he is thinking about the whole Arab minority,” he said.

Netanyahu has been deeply involved in mediating between far-right parties to ensure they all cross the vote threshold needed to enter parliament. This summer, he hosted Ben Gvir and other far-right leaders at his seaside residence. 

During the 2021 election — when Jewish Power was barely scraping the threshold — Netanyahu said Ben Gvir was “not fit” to be a minister. In this election — with Jewish Power surging in the polls — Netanyahu has said he would “certainly” offer Ben Gvir a ministerial post. 

“There is no far-right without Netanyahu,” Merav Michaeli, the leader of the center-left Labor Party told NBC News. 

“It is going to be so harmful for Israel if we have such extreme right-wing people in the Cabinet, in the government,” he said.  “I’m really, really worried about what that would do to Israel’s position in the world and to its relationship with its allies.”

In Washington, even traditional supporters of Israel have sounded the alarm over the prospect of far-right politicians sitting around the Cabinet table — and potentially opposite Biden administration officials during diplomatic talks. 

“I urge Israeli political leaders from all sides of the political spectrum to ostracize extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir,” Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., said in a tweet. “These extremists undermine Israel’s interests and the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

A spokesman for Netanyahu did not return a request for comment. But in public remarks, Netanyahu has been scornful of U.S. pressure urging him not to join forces with Jewish Power.

“We are a democracy and we will decide who will be in the next government,” he said in a recent radio interview.

Ned Price, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said: “This will be up to the people of Israel to decide the configuration of their next government. No matter the shape of the Israeli coalition and government our relationship will be strong and enduring.”