Benjamin Netanyahu has now served as prime minister of Israel longer than anyone in history — three non-consecutive stints over 18 years, or almost a quarter of the time Israel has been an independent country.

And from the beginning, his power has been on the verge of collapse.

About a year into his first term as prime minister, the international press smelled blood in the water. Netanyahu was facing possible indictment over a bribery scandal involving his attorney general — though, as the Washington Post noted in an editorial headlined “Can Mr. Netanyahu hang on?,” he was already “hip-deep in controversy” before that scandal erupted. After an embarrassingly botched assassination attempt targeting Hamas’ Khaled Meshal that damaged relations with Israel’s most important Arab ally, the Economist dubbed him “Israel’s serial bungler.”

While Netanyahu’s “easy eloquence” appealed to supporters abroad, particularly American Republicans, the British weekly noted, “as the wayward decisions mount up, his support is starting to dwindle. He is criticised for pursuing cheap popularity, regardless of the consequences; political scandal has swirled around him; the arrogance of his assumption that the Palestinians will in the end accept whatever he offers them is beginning to be questioned.”

A sentence like that could have been written at any point in the last 28 years, including in recent weeks. Polls show Netanyahu’s coalition would be out of power if elections were held today. That coalition is itself divided and in danger of falling apart at nearly any time over the contentious issue of military service for the ultra-Orthodox. He is facing potential jail time in a long-running corruption trial, as well as a commission of inquiry over the security failures that led to October 7, the most violent day in Israel’s history. Internationally, he’s under indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. He evidently takes these charges seriously enough that his flight to the UN General Assembly in New York month took a circuitous route to avoid countries that might enforce the ICC’s arrest warrant.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s signature foreign policy achievement — the Abraham Accords normalization process with Israel’s Arab neighbors — has been threatened by both the anger over the carnage in Gaza and Israel’s threats to annex the West Bank. Israel itself is increasingly isolated on the world stage, threatened with expulsion from international projects ranging from

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