Benjamin Netanyahu is set to return to power for a sixth term and this time he will be the head of the most right-wing coalition in Israel's history.

Netanyahu secured a mandate to form a government following his November 1 election win. Backed by ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties and an extreme-right bloc, he is poised to end Israel's unprecedented era of political gridlock that forced five elections in less than four years. His government will replace the coalition that ousted him in 2021.

Netanyahu, 73, who is fighting corruption allegations in court, had a mandate to conclude coalition talks by midnight on December 21. Minutes before the deadline, Netanyahu informed President Isaac Herzog on phone that "he has been able to establish a government", as per the statement.

With the high-profile politician, who has maintained close ties with India, let's take look at the life and times of Nethanyahu.

Who is Benjamin Netanyahu?

Benjamin Netanyahu, byname Bibi, is an Israeli politician and diplomat who served twice as the Israeli Prime Minister from 1996 to 1999 and 2009 to 2021. He was in power for 15 years, including 12 consecutive years. He was Israel's youngest prime minister and the longest-serving prime minister since Israel's independence and surpassed the country's founding father David Ben-Gurion.

Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv (now Tel Aviv–Yafo) on October 21, 1949. His father, Benzion Netanyahu was a historian. In 1963, Netanyahu moved to Philadelphia, US with his family.

He enlisted in the Israeli military in 1967 and became a soldier in the elite special operations unit Sayeret Matkal. He was part of the team that rescued a hijacked plane at the Tel Aviv airport in 1972.

Also read: Benjamin Netanyahu invited to form new Israel government — fourth in five years

Later, he got a bachelor's degree in architecture and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During this time, he also fought in the Yom Kippur War in Israel in 1973.

Netanyahu held several ambassadorship positions before being elected to the Knesset (Israeli parliament) as a Likud party member in 1988. He served as deputy minister of foreign affairs from 1988 to 1991. He then served as the deputy minister in Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s coalition cabinet from 1991 to 1992.

In 1993, he won the election as the leader of the Likud party, and was noticed for his opposition to the 1993 Israel-PLO peace accords and the resulting Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Following then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995 and a series of suicide bombings by Muslim militants in 1996, Netanyahu etched out a victory margin of about 1 percent in the elections of 1996, the first in which the prime minister was directly elected. Netanyahu then became the youngest person ever to serve as Israel’s prime minister.

In 2009, Netanyahu’s Likud party made sizable gains as he led the party to 27 Knesset seats. Netanyahu gathered the support of other parties and was asked by Israel’s president to form the government for the second time in 2009.

Corruption charge

Netanyahu and members of his inner circle have been accused of bribery and other forms of corruption. The Israeli police registered four cases against Netanyahu and his close aides involving charges of bribery, and trade of favourable regulatory policies for Bezeq, a telecommunications company, in exchange for positive media coverage.

However, Netanyahu’s corruption trial was derailed in early 2022 after reports of the police using the Pegasus spyware to hack the cell phones of some of the trial’s witnesses emerged.

Meanwhile, as leader of the largest party in the opposition, Netanyahu began taking an aggressive approach toward the ruling coalition to regain support on his way back to power.

(Edited by : Jerome Anthony)

First Published:Dec 22, 2022 10:37 AM IST