The many battles of Benjamin Netanyahu

Perhaps the most surprising — and potentially serious — of the prime minister’s domestic battles is the recent rebellion within his coalition, and even his own party, when members refused to support a piece of legislation he ordered them to pass.

The bill to give the government more power over Israel’s municipal rabbis — local officials who oversee marriage, divorce and other domestic issues — was pushed by the prime minister’s ultra-Orthodox allies. Critics said it was a power grab meant to give the ultra-Orthodox greater influence, even in Israel’s more secular cities.

Likud mayors and lawmakers balked in a rare rebellion, and Netanyahu was forced to pull the bill.

It was a small uprising, but political watchers have been looking for signs that the prime minister’s iron grip on Likud could be slipping. As Netanyahu’s public support has plummeted, others within the party — among them former Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat — are known to be quietly positioning themselves as the next party leader.

Another prominent Likud member, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, has also bucked Netanyahu, refusing to support legislation that would protect the ultra-Orthodox exemption from military service from legal challenges.

But Netanyahu needs the ultra-Orthodox parties, and they are threatening to collapse the government if their bills aren’t passed.

Soon after Oct. 7, opposition leader Benny Gantz joined an emergency war cabinet along with Gallant and Netanyahu. The political rivals agreed to coequal roles in the body responsible for the highest war-related decisions as a way of showing the nation a united front.

The team-of-rivals structure held as Israel launched a ground invasion and battled across Gaza for months. But tensions built as the group split on various cease-fire proposals that would have led to hostage releases and over Netanyahu’s refusal to articulate a strategy for governing Gaza after the war.

In both cases, the prime minister refused to commit, seemingly to avoid a break with his far-right coalition members, who loudly objected to any policies that would stop the fighting or allow a role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza’s future. With only a four-seat majority in the parliament, Netanyahu cannot afford to lose even one of his coalition parties.

The war cabinet finally fractured completely, when Gantz and his party ally Gadi Eizenkot resigned June 9. Netanyahu dissolved the body entirely days later.

Gantz’s departure raised fears that the prime minister will rely more heavily on his most extreme partners in the still raging Gaza conflict, even as a second war threatens to erupt with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Since resigning, Gantz has been more vocal about the need to secure a cease-fire and free the hostages. His moves may have boosted anti-Netanyahu street protests that have grown larger in recent weeks, and featured more crackdowns by police.

Gantz, who ran against Netanyahu in past elections, has at times surpassed the prime minister in polls since Oct. 7.

As the battles in Gaza have ground on — the fighting has killed more than 300 Israeli soldiers and more than 37,000 Palestinians — top officers have increasingly flagged the need for a “day after” plan: Who would run Gaza when the fighting ended?

For the commanders, the question is a military necessity. Without a plan for some authority to take control, they cannot pull troops from Gaza without fear that Hamas would quickly regroup, rearm and threaten to carry out another Oct. 7.

For Netanyahu, it is a political minefield. His most extreme partners advocate for Israel to permanently occupy Gaza, and even to rebuild Jewish settlements there.

Caught in the middle, Netanyahu has refused to form any plan at all. When pushed, he repeated only that Israel would keep fighting until Hamas is “destroyed.”

Military leaders, who are close to completing their target lists in Gaza, seem to have had enough. The complaints they had shared with reporters off the record for weeks became increasingly public. Earlier this week, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s chief spokesman, said in an interview that “Hamas cannot be destroyed. Hamas is an idea. Those who think it can be made to disappear are wrong.”

The military remains one of the country’s most respected institutions.

The president and the prime minister have had a fraught relationship since Biden took office in 2021. Following Netanyahu’s close embrace of President Donald Trump and the GOP, Biden denied or delayed the usual courtesy phone calls and White House visits. Washington took a dim view of Netanyahu’s judicial restructuring plans.

All that went away after Oct. 7, when Biden threw his support behind Netanyahu and Israel’s right to wage war on Hamas.

The rapprochement didn’t last. American officials complained privately about Netanyahu’s refusal to formulate a day-after plan and the growing humanitarian collapse inside Gaza. Diplomatic finger pointing grew more public as several pledges to increase aid failed to materialize and one cease-fire proposal after another faltered, in some cases, administration officials hinted, because of the prime minister’s political maneuvering.

Biden officials urged Netanyahu to get more aid into Gaza and to hold off on a major attack on Rafah, Hamas’s final stronghold, where more than 1 million civilians had fled for safety. The IDF moved on Rafah in early May anyway. Biden, who has called Netanyahu’s war management “a mistake,” paused one shipment of heavy bombs that he said he didn’t want used in the assault.

Last month, Biden publicized the details of a cease-fire proposal that he said Netanyahu’s war cabinet had approved. The president seemed to be forcing the prime minister to take ownership of the plan, over the objections of Netanyahu’s right-wing partners. That plan fizzled when Hamas insisted on tighter guarantees that there would be a permanent end to the war.

The rancor has only grown more pointed. On Tuesday, Netanyahu released a video in which he accused Biden of hampering Israel’s war effort. “It’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.”

U.S. officials reacted with private fury — canceling a strategic planning meeting scheduled for this week — and public confusion. Only the one shipment of heavy bombs had been delayed, officials said, while millions of dollars in other arms continued to flow.

“We genuinely do not know what he’s talking about. We just don’t,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.