TRT World – How Netanyahu is intensifying wars and whipping up nationalism to win upcoming elections

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging and expanding multiple wars across Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran to bolster his chances of winning the forthcoming national elections he is widely expected to lose. 

Despite a US-brokered ceasefire signed in April, Israel has deepened its control of Lebanon beyond the Litani River, seizing strategic sites like Beaufort Castle. 

At the same time, Tel Aviv has firmed up military control of roughly 70 percent of Gaza, besides joining the US in a full-scale war against Iran.

Originally scheduled for October but likely to take place earlier, the country will go to the polls for the first time since Hamas attacked Israel three years ago. 

Tel Aviv has been at war ever since. It has attacked six countries, including Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria, and Yemen, since October 7, 2023.  

These open-ended wars have contributed to Netanyahu's growing unpopularity at home. 

At the same time, Netanyahu has faced international isolation, with the UN-backed International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for him over war crimes.

Experts say Israeli prime ministers have shown a pattern of using security crises to obscure their governance failures and win over right-wing voters, regardless of mounting economic and social challenges.

Mtanes Shehadeh, a former Knesset member, tells TRT World that Israeli prime ministers have shown a historical tendency to escalate military offensives right before elections.

He cites Menachem Begin's 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor shortly before the vote, which enjoyed broad public support, and Shimon Peres's 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath in Lebanon.

“However, Netanyahu has gone much further,†Shehadeh says.

“He has continued to wage wars not only in an effort to improve his electoral standing, but also in an attempt to obscure the impact of the major failure associated with the events of October 7, 2023,†he says.

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According to Shehadeh, Netanyahu has sought military successes to overshadow that failure, but has faced disappointment. 

Objectives in the current wars against Iran and Hezbollah remain unmet, he notes.

Led by Netanyahu, the Likud party was in power from 2009 to 2021. After a brief stint out of power, Netanyahu regained the premiership in December 2022 and has led the country since then as Israel's longest-serving prime minister.

Ozgur Dikmen, a PhD candidate at Stanford University studying Jewish politics, holds a similar view about Israeli premiers intensifying military attacks ahead of elections.

He refers to Ehud Olmert's Operation Cast Lead in late 2008, ahead of the 2009 elections and Netanyahu's 2012 military action against Hamas before the 2013 polls.

“Thus, we can certainly speak of such a pattern among Israeli prime ministers,†Dikmen tells TRT World.

He notes that these military attacks also serve to prop up coalitions, such as the 12-day war against Iran amid ultra-Orthodox conscription disputes.

Post-October 7, Israel struck multiple countries “in a bid to save the political image of Netanyahu from an imminent collapseâ€.

This pattern explains the stalled ceasefires in Gaza, the expanding Lebanon war, and resistance to settle a months-long war against Iran, he says.

Arik Rudnitzky of Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center offers a different view.

He tells TRT World that there is “no clear pattern†of military escalation ahead of elections.