THE MIDDLE EAST THAT BENJAMIN NETANYAHU BUILT

How the vision of Israel's longest-serving premier came to reality—that strength, not agreement, delivers security

- BY TOM O'CONNOR ILLUSTRATION BY GREGORI SAAVEDRA

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU LAID OUT A WORLDVIEW IN HIS 1993 book, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations, that would come to define both his leadership and the region around him. Rejecting the optimism of the post-Cold War peace process, he instead advanced a harder doctrine, what he called a “peace of deterrence,” rooted not in reconciliation, but in power: “the only kind of peace that can endure in the Middle East is a peace that can be defended.”

Today, Netanyahu, known to many simply as “Bibi,” has remade Israel and the region in that vision. Threats posed by Arab autocracies have been neutralized or placated. The Oslo-era peace process that pushed for Palestinian statehood is but a distant memory. And Israel has demonstrated overwhelming military success in its longest and deadliest war to date against Iran and its “Axis of Resistance.”

Braving myriad criticisms and controversies, including the initial failure to prevent Hamas’ October 2023 attack that plunged the Middle East into its greatest conflict in decades, Netanyahu, now Israel’s longest-serving premier, has turned disaster into opportunity.

“I always say there are leaders in history and leaders of history. Netanyahu is a leader of history,” Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and founder of the Israel Advocacy Group, tells Newsweek.

Much like World War II-era British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, whose picture adorns the Israeli premier’s desk and whose words he often cites, Oren says Netanyahu “sees himself as being born to fulfill a specific role,” adding, “This is the moment he’s been born for, the moment we’re in right now.”

“After the October 7 jihadi onslaught, the prime minister said Israel would change the face of the Middle East,” an Israeli official who declined to be named tells Newsweek. “No longer a promise, it is happening, decisively.”

Fighting a Shadow War