Benjamin Netanyahu is back. In the recent parliamentary elections in Israel, his right-wing religious bloc secured 64 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament
Netanyahu’s Likud party emerged as the strongest political force with 32 seats in the November 1 election.
The rise of Benjamin Netanyahu
In his political career that started in the early 1990s, Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu was written off several times. And every time, he made a stronger comeback
Born in 1949 in Tel Aviv, a year after the state of Israel was formed, he grew up in Israel and the U.S
In the 1990s, the former commando started his political journey, amid faltering Israel-Palestine peace talks
In 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, was assassinated by a Jewish extremist.
The assassination led to an early election a year later that saw Netanyahu, a hardline critic of the Oslo process, come to power.
In 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu became Israel’s youngest Prime Minister and the first to be born in the state of Israel.In the 1999 election, Netanyahu was unable to defend his post
The right accused him of having compromised too much on the Oslo Peace Accords, and even back then, there were allegations of corruption against him. But he returned to power a decade later in 2009. His hold over Israeli politics was challenged again in 2019 after the fall of his government.
In 2021, his rivals from across Israel’s political spectrum joined hands to form a coalition with the main goal of keeping Bibi out of power.
But after 17 months in opposition, Netanyahu, known as King Bibi by his supporters, made another comeback last week
Report: Stanly Johny
Production: Gayatri Menon
Voiceover : Kanishkaa Balachandran
