Thinking a possible Netanyahu departure changes anything? Think again.

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Likud Party leader and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech to supporters at the Likud campaign headquarters following the release of exit polls and initial results of the general election in Jerusalem on October 28, 2026. [Saeed Qaq – Anadolu Agency]

by Dr Brendan Ciarán Browne brendancbrowne

The prospect of seeing the architect of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, Benjamin Netanyahu, ousted from political office would be a small, albeit completely pyrrhic, ‘victory’. This is a politician who has spent the past three years justifying industrial-scale levels of civilian slaughter, the enforced starvation of an entire civilian population and the complete levelling of the Gaza Strip. He has been the public face of Israel on the global stage for the best part of 20 years, rubbing shoulders with world leaders and garnering support for the expansion of Israel’s settler colonial mission in historic Palestine.

As something of a political cockroach, he has managed to survive various high-profile scandals. These include criminal proceedings brought against him on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and a (largely symbolic) arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, one that he and leaders in the West have completely ignored. Nevertheless, it seems that Netanyahu has become increasingly awakened to the fact that his time may well be running out. He turned to his X account to post an AI-generated image of a nuclear bomb hitting downtown Tel Aviv in an ever so subtle effort to stir up feelings of existential dread amongst an Israeli public who have fully drunk the anti-Iranian Kool-Aid.

Waiting in the wings to take over could be former Israeli army chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot. He is a man said to be fervently against Palestinian statehood and fully committed to the destruction of Hamas. His ‘achievements’ include the creation of the ‘Dahiya Doctrine’, a policy born of the 2006 Lebanon war that promotes the use of extraordinary and excessive military force against civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Whilst there can be no doubt that the Zionist project of expansion and the associated erasure of Palestinians have been moving at warp speed since 2023, those who are watching the Israeli elections from afar (including many in the activist community) and hoping for change would do well to adopt a longer gaze.

It has never really mattered who is in charge in Israel. The policies that undergird decades of relentless genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians have, over the years, largely remained the same. Political commentators euphemistically throw around terms like ‘hawk’ and ‘dove’ to provide the illusion that there is even the slightest possibility an Israeli leader is remotely interested in ‘peace’. But the terms are meaningless, and as with everything in the region, Israeli leaders’ actions speak louder than hollow words.

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Take, for example, the tenure of Yitzhak Rabin: winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, architect of the ‘break their bones’ policy (sounds peaceful, right?) and the person responsible for signing the Oslo Accords. Under his watch, Palestine continued to be subjected to the scourge of relentless settlement expansion and the house demolitions that went with it. ‘Peace’ for Rabin was far removed from ending the occupation. Instead, it meant managing and containing the Palestinian population and their legitimate demands for self-determination, whilst subscribing to a ‘peace’ plan that outsourced responsibility for the occupation to a subservient Palestinian Authority and willing accomplices in the West.

Then there is the chameleonic Shimon Peres, a man who enjoyed adulation amongst many in the West. They would do well to google the Qana massacre in southern Lebanon, an abhorrent act of barbarity that he once famously said he was at ‘peace’ with (no pun intended). See also Ehud Olmert, who, whilst being relatively outspoken against the ongoing genocide in Gaza (not using that language, of course), oversaw the targeted assassination of Palestinian leaders, the 2006 war in Lebanon and the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was threatened with arrest whilst visiting the UK in 2009 over allegations of war crimes committed in Gaza while he was defence minister. Others, including Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, have made it very clear that they have little to no interest in making ‘peace’ with Palestinians, nor even in countenancing the notion that there would ever be a Palestinian state.

What should be abundantly clear, therefore, is that for Palestinians, as Elaine Bradley and I have previously argued, the passing of time can be mapped on to a series of failed ‘peace’ processes, from Madrid to Oslo to Wye River to Camp David. The consistent theme has been the creeping erasure of Palestine and a doubling down of the West’s support for Israel’s expansive settler colonial aims.

I don’t say any of this whimsically, but those who are advocating for Palestine must be far more critical in their analysis than simply hoping for change based on the possible downfall of Netanyahu.

If you are committed to Palestinian liberation, you must shun any false ‘hope’ that comes with the appointment of a new political leader in Israel. It is a mirage and an unhelpful distraction. No matter who is in charge, without a fundamental reckoning with the racist ideology that undergirds the Zionist state-building project and a full dismantling of the architectures of militarisation and apartheid, things will continue along the same path. Our role, therefore, is not to place any false hope in a change of leadership inside Israel, but to double down on our efforts to ensure we do all at our disposal to support inevitable Palestinian liberation.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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