Israel's former premier Netanyahu set to make comeback after key election win

By Abdelraouf Arna'out

JERUSALEM (AA) - With the results of Tuesday's parliamentary elections out, Israel's former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to return to power.

After five elections in less than four years with Netanyahu at the helm of his right-wing bloc, the country's longest-serving prime minister appears set to come back from more than a year in the opposition.

According to preliminary results and exit polls, Netanyahu will be able to form a right-wing government without the need to ally with any of his opponent parties.

- Upcoming right-wing government

Over the past years, Netanyahu has been beset by charges of bribery, fraud, and abuse of trust. To avoid being tried in court, he entered talks with smaller parties in which he was prepared to step down as premier in order to remain in the government.

After losing his post as prime minister after 12 years in June last year to a strenuous eight-party coalition, using this hiatus to strengthen his position in his Likud party, as well as his alliance with the far-right parties, including Shas, Religious Zionism, and United Torah Judaism.

After Tuesday's polls, the latest results, though yet unofficial, showed Netanyahu's bloc securing 65 seats out of the 120-member Knesset, qualifying him to form a stable government with no support from centrist or leftist parties,

- Netanyahu's political history

Netanyahu was born on Oct. 21, 1949, in Tel Aviv, later moving to southern occupied Jerusalem with his family.

Relocating to the US in 1963, he returned four years later and fought in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.

Serving in the elite Israeli force known as Sayeret Matkal, Netanyahu also participated in the October 1973 war against Egypt and Syria.

After his time in the military, Netanyahu studied architecture and business administration, before taking a position as director at the Yonatan Research Institute for Terrorism, an Israeli think tank in 1978-1980.

He served as deputy head of the Israeli mission in Washington in 1982-1984, after which he was appointed as Tel Aviv's ambassador to the UN for four years.

In 1988, he joined his currently party, Likud, and got elected to Israel's parliament, known as the Knesset, for the first time.

Rising in the ranks of Likud, he became party head in 1993 and prime minister of the country in May 1996.

- Israel's longest-serving premier

In October 1998, Netanyahu and late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat signed the Wye River memorandum in Washington after eight days of talks under the auspices of former US President Bill Clinton.

Netanyahu lost the 1999 elections to Ehud Barak, then the head of the Labor party.

He returned to power during the government of Ariel Sharon as finance minister in 2003-2005.

Sharon later left Likud, allowing for Netanyahu to take the reins of the party as the main opposition party until 2009, when he became prime minister for the second time.

He held this position until 2021, when right-wing politician Neftali Bennett secured the needed Knesset votes to become Israel's new prime minister.

By that time, the embattled Netanyahu had served as prime minister for longer than any other Israeli head of government, with 12 years under his belt.

- Internal and external operations

Over Netanyahu's 12 years in power, the Israeli army carried out several military operations against the Gaza Strip, most notably the offensives in 2012, 2014, and May 2021. These offensives left at least 2,741 Palestinians dead.

The Israeli premier built a strong relationship with former US President Donald Trump, during which time Washington recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved the US Embassy there from Tel Aviv. Trump also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights.

During Netanyahu's reign, several foreign reports also suggested that the Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria.

In his last years in power, 2020, Netanyahu signed normalization deals with the Arab nations of Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the UAE. The deals drew widespread condemnation from Palestinians, who say the accords ignore their rights and do not serve the Palestinian cause.

* Writing by Ahmed Asmar