Bibi Ascendant; but for How Long?
Also, another hero returns to Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara arrive to cast their vote at a polling station in Jerusalem on August 17, 2026, as party members vote in the Likud primary elections to determine the party’s Knesset list ahead of the Israeli general elections. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
It’s Tuesday, August 18, and last night’s battle royal of 120 candidates ended with one victor: Benjamin Netanyahu.
First, context.
The Likud primaries were held last night. With most polls putting the party at 23 to 24 seats going into the election, there were 24 spots to fight for—or so it appeared. First, take out Chairman Netanyahu’s automatic spot at number 1, the six places in the top 24 the Central Committee set aside for his personal picks, and another three for specific members who had secured their own guaranteed spots. What remain is 13 or 14 spots, contested by 120 candidates.
MK Tally Gotliv attends a plenum session in the assembly hall of the Knesset, June 17, 2026. (Oren Ben Hakoon/Flash90)
Among the 120 sat two threats to Netanyahu’s power—one who would threaten him before the election, one after. The first, Tally Gotliv—Israel’s Marjorie Taylor Greene—is known for her deranged conspiracy rants about the left collaborating with Hamas, and for a voting record that betrays her own party as often as not. She was the lunatic poised to run the asylum, if she landed a high enough seat.
Going into the election, the image Netanyahu would like to project is the one from his legendary 2015 campaign ad, the Bibi-sitter. Who would you rather have watch your kids, the ad asks—Bibi, or his then-rivals Tzipi Livni and Bougie Herzog? Bibi is the adult in the room: experienced, responsible, the safe pair of hands. Would Bennett or Eisenkot really be better? The internal threat Bibi faced in delivering that message is that no one would leave their children with Tali Gotliv.
That’s why Bibi spent the season trying to push the conspiracy theorist he championed in 2022 as low on the list as possible. She placed 12th, better than Bibi would have liked, but significantly worse than she wanted. Gotliv is now a backbencher that Bibi can safely dismiss as fringe to the more responsible core of the Likud party.
Nir Barkat, Minister of Economy and Industry, casts his vote at a polling station during the Likud party’s internal elections in Jerusalem, July 27, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
The second enemy was Minister and ex-Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat—the most recent Likudnik to think he could become king. In the days following October 7, Barkat held a flurry of consultations with his numerous paid advisers. Netanyahu was weak; it seemed the perfect time for a putsch. As usual with the once-tech-CEO’s operations, the execution was expensive, clumsy, and unsuccessful. From October 2023 through March 2024, Barkat tried to bring down the budget, attacked the government from the right, and then outflanked it from the left by calling for commissions of inquiry.
In between, he met with ministers, MKs, and members of the media and explained why only he could save the country.
Surprisingly, the country was not convinced. On the last day of November 2023, a minister went to Netanyahu and told him about the putsch, which Netanyahu promptly dismantled. The annals of Likud history are littered with the bodies of men who tried to overthrow Netanyahu—even those who thought they would passively inherit the leadership. Barkat, it seemed, ignored the message.
If he ignored the message beforehand, he certainly couldn’t ignore it last night. After millions of shekels poured into his campaign, he came 16th in the primaries—which, once the reserved spots are counted, puts him 24th, barely hanging on by his fingernails. Netanyahu can quite easily step on those fingers with one more reserved spot; once someone tries to kill the king, he tends to try again.
The results show one thing: Bibi is still in charge. His enemies were largely thrown down by his voters, and his endorsed candidates did well. Bibi can confidently paraphrase Louis XIV: he is the party, but that raises the question of what happens after he is gone.
If Bibi doesn’t choose to pass the torch, death will eventually choose for him. Either way, it is likely to set the Likud house on fire. Some will desperately try to save the structure; others will run off in search of different shelter. Itamar Ben Gvir may have given us a hint as to where, claiming that eight Likud members approached him about joining Otzma Yehudit’s list, presumably fearing they’d lose in the primary.
Netanyahu’s secret sauce is his ability to hold the more populist working class and the more moderate middle class under a single roof by sheer force of personality. The 50-year-old party has had only four leaders, all of them—Bibi excepted—imposing figures in their own right, prominent in Israel’s fight for independence or the wars that followed. No such commanding presence sat among the 120 candidates scrambling for the top 23. Still, many will try.
But who knows. Perhaps someone can arise to take Bibi’s place and save Likud. As Nir Barkat recently quoted, “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
Yehuda Katz. (Courtesy)
On June 11, 1982, in the third week of the First Lebanon War, an Israeli armored force pushed into the Beqaa Valley, not knowing that a Syrian ambush was waiting for them near the village of Sultan Yacoub.
The fighting was close and confused. When it ended, 30 IDF soldiers lay dead and five more were missing. Two of the missing were eventually returned alive; the other three, all tank crewmen, were lost for decades. The fates of Zachary Baumel, Zvi Feldman, and Yehuda Katz became one of the longest-running open wounds in Israel’s history of soldiers missing in action.
They came back one at a time, each by a different road. Baumel was first, in 2019, his remains recovered from Syria with Russian help and returned for burial in Israel, 37 years after the ambush. Feldman followed in 2025, brought out in a covert Mossad operation. And now Katz, the last of the three, has been found after 44 years, and his family has finally been told that the search is over.
Two men remain missing to this day: the navigator Ron Arad, shot down over Lebanon in 1986, and Guy Hever, who vanished near an army base on the Golan Heights in August 1997 under circumstances that were never resolved. Israel remembers these soldiers, and I have a feeling, informed by decades of witnessing the determination to find the missing, that I will live to see all of Israel’s lost sons return home.
English Editor: Ari Tatarka
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I sometimes wish that you could explain the politics of my country because I can`t figure out why , why , why the far right is so strong in the Former GDR counties/ie Länder. 🙋🏼♀️