Benjamin Netanyahu has spent much of his political career persuading Israelis that he alone stands between them and annihilation. The irony is that the man who has made national security the central justification for his extraordinary longevity in office presided over the most devastating security failure in Israel’s history. Three years after October 7, 2023, the country still awaits an independent state commission capable of establishing precisely how that catastrophe occurred, who ignored the warnings and who must accept responsibility.

For a politician who has survived scandals, indictments, coalition rebellions and successive elections, accountability remains the one adversary that cannot be dispatched with an air strike. Israel’s October 27 election has brought this contradiction into sharper focus. The preliminary results have dealt Netanyahu a setback, but they have not delivered a decisive defeat.

His Likud remains competitive, the opposition has no effortless route to a majority, and Arab-led parties could determine who forms the next government. The prospect of another election cannot be ruled out either. Netanyahu understands the advantages of political exhaustion. If the public can be persuaded that no alternative government is viable, the incumbent can present his own survival as a national necessity.

Yet the arithmetic of parliamentary seats is only part of the story. Netanyahu faces three corruption cases involving allegations of gifts and benefits, dealings with a newspaper publisher, and regulatory favours allegedly exchanged for favourable media coverage. Obviously, he has denied wrongdoing, but his trial has continued, and he has sought a presidential pardon.

Losing office would not make him guilty, nor would it automatically send him to prison. It could, however, diminish his ability to use the demands of the premiership as a reason for postponing proceedings and would deprive him of some of the political leverage he currently enjoys. The temptation to conflate these legal cases with October 7 must be resisted, but so must the opposite temptation to pretend that the two are politically unrelated.

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A national emergency can alter the public agenda, defer questions of accountability and allow a leader........

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