Benjamin Netanyahu

In 2020, Netanyahu signed the Abraham Accords, normalizing Israel's diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

Sudan also announced normalization with Israel in October 2020, but the agreement was never formally implemented. No embassy was opened, and the civil war in Sudan since 2023 has frozen the process.

Even so, it was the first wave of Arab-Israeli normalization since the agreements with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994).

Benjamin Netanyahu's trial began in May 2020. It covers three separate cases, known as "Case 1000," "Case 2000" and "Case 4000." He is charged with fraud and breach of trust, and with bribery in Case 4000.

He denies all the charges.

His testimony began in December 2024 and ended on June 24, 2026, after 98 hearings. The trial has since moved to the re-examination phase, with no date set for a verdict.

When his testimony ended, in June 2026, the judges again recommended that the prosecution drop the bribery charge in Case 4000. They believe it would be hard to prove and would make the trial longer. They had made the same recommendation in June 2023, and the prosecution refused it at the time. The recommendation does not cover the breach of trust charges, which remain.

He also requested a presidential pardon in November 2025. President Herzog has put off his decision and prefers mediation toward a plea deal. As of mid-September 2026, there was no decision on the request, and Netanyahu had not yet responded to the mediation proposal.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked southern Israel from Gaza, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. That same day, Netanyahu announced that the country was at war. The next day, his government's security cabinet adopted the official decision and set the start of the war at 6:00 a.m. on October 7.

On October 10, 2025, a ceasefire took effect in Gaza. The government had approved the first phase of US President Donald Trump's plan. This phase included an end to the fighting, a partial IDF withdrawal and the release of the hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

The last living hostages were released on October 13, 2025. The body of the last hostage, Ran Gvili, was returned to Israel on January 26, 2026. From then on, no hostages were held in Gaza.

The second phase of the plan calls for Hamas to disarm. In late July 2026, Hamas accepted a disarmament roadmap in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal. Israel had not confirmed it at that time.

Netanyahu has been criticized for his government's failure to foresee the attack. In November 2025, the government chose to set up its own commission of inquiry rather than an independent state commission of inquiry. The opposition and victims' families criticized this choice. They see it as an attempt to avoid examining the prime minister's responsibility. Netanyahu rejects this view.

A bill to write this commission into law passed a first reading in the Knesset on July 6, 2026, with the opposition boycotting the vote. The Supreme Court, which received petitions calling for a state commission of inquiry, postponed its decision until after the election, with a deadline of January 15, 2027.

Starting October 8, 2023, Hezbollah opened a front from Lebanon in support of Hamas.

Until summer 2024, Netanyahu kept to a strategy of limited strikes in response, without a large-scale offensive. Meanwhile, the escalation displaced about 60,000 Israelis from the north of the country.

In September 2024, his government moved to broader action. On September 17 and 18, thousands of Hezbollah pagers and then walkie-talkies exploded at the same time across Lebanon. At first, the operation was not officially claimed. On November 10, 2024, Netanyahu said he had personally made the decision. The statement was widely seen as a jab at his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, whom he had fired a few days earlier.

On September 27, 2024, his government carried out a massive strike on Hezbollah's underground headquarters in Beirut, killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

He then launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon starting October 1, 2024.

On November 27, 2024, his government accepted a ceasefire brokered by the United States and France. It called for Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River and for Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon.

On February 4, 2025, during his first White House visit of Trump's new term, he gave Trump a gold-plated pager. His office presented it as a symbol of "the Prime Minister's decision that marked a turning point in the war" against Hezbollah.

Throughout 2025, he authorized repeated strikes. He presented them as measures to enforce the agreement; Lebanon called them violations.

In early March 2026, he relaunched a broader offensive, citing the strikes on Iran and repeated Hezbollah violations of the ceasefire. A new ground offensive began in mid-March.

On April 8, 2026, his government carried out its largest operation of this phase, striking more than 100 targets.

New ceasefires were announced under his authority in April and then in June 2026, but they were largely not implemented. As of early October 2026, Israel still occupies several dozen Lebanese villages along its "yellow line," strikes continue, and Hezbollah has not disarmed.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC), an international court based in The Hague, issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. It suspects them of war crimes in Gaza, including using starvation as a method of warfare, and of crimes against humanity.

Israel has not ratified the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the ICC. It therefore rejects the Court's authority over its citizens and denies these accusations. The Court has kept the warrants in place despite Israel's appeals.

The ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, who had requested the warrants, was accused of sexual misconduct by a female staff member. He stepped aside in May 2025. On July 24, 2026, the Court's member states removed him from office for serious misconduct, by 82 votes out of 125. He denies the allegations and contests the decision.

Netanyahu welcomed his removal. In his view, Karim Khan brought these cases to divert attention from his own alleged misconduct.

The removal does not cancel the warrants; only the Court's judges can withdraw them. A new prosecutor must be appointed.

On December 8, 2024, a rebel coalition led by Ahmed al-Sharaa (Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, HTS) took Damascus and overthrew Bashar al-Assad.

In the following days, Netanyahu ordered a campaign of airstrikes that destroyed much of Syria's military capabilities (navy, air defenses, weapons depots). The goal was to keep them out of the hands of Islamist groups.

He also had the IDF take up positions in the UN buffer zone on the Golan, beyond the 1973 demarcation line. This was presented as a temporary defensive measure.

Throughout 2025, he continued this policy: repeated strikes, a larger military presence in the buffer zone, and a demand for a demilitarized zone between the Golan and Damascus, despite Syrian and international protests.

In July 2025, deadly fighting broke out in the Druze province of Sweida between Druze militias and Bedouin tribes, who were joined by Syrian government forces. According to a UN commission of inquiry, the violence killed more than 1,700 people, most of them Druze, and displaced about 200,000. On July 15 and 16, 2025, Netanyahu ordered strikes on a Syrian military convoy heading to Sweida and then on the Syrian defense ministry in Damascus. He presented Israel as the protector of the Druze, calling them "brothers in arms" of Israel's Druze community. A US-brokered ceasefire took effect on July 18. The intervention put Netanyahu in open tension with the Trump administration, which was trying to keep good relations with the new Syrian government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was "very concerned" about the Israeli strikes and called for them to stop immediately.

At the same time, his government held direct security talks with Damascus, with US help starting in 2025. By the fall, the talks had nearly produced a framework agreement covering an end to the strikes, a withdrawal from southern Syria and guarantees for the Druze community.

The talks stopped in November 2025: Syria demanded that Israel withdraw completely from the areas of southern Syria it has occupied since Assad's fall.

In November 2025, a meeting between Ahmed al-Sharaa and Donald Trump in Washington revived the idea of Syria joining the Abraham Accords.

In late September 2026, al-Sharaa said the talks had reached about 90% agreement before Israel pulled out. As of early October 2026, no security agreement or normalization had been signed.

Netanyahu has long made Iran's nuclear program a top foreign policy priority. He took the issue to the UN as early as September 2012, holding up a hand-drawn diagram of a bomb before the General Assembly to set a "red line" on Iranian enrichment.

He then strongly opposed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA). In March 2015, he even addressed the US Congress, at the invitation of the Republicans and against the wishes of the Obama administration. He warned that the deal would open Iran's path to a bomb rather than block it.

In April 2018, he publicly revealed what the Mossad presented as the archive of Iran's secret military nuclear program, known as "Project Amad." A month later, on May 8, 2018, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, a move Netanyahu had long called for.

The issue grew more serious in 2024 and 2025. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported a growing stockpile of uranium enriched to 60%, close to weapons grade, reaching about 441 kg by spring 2025. Netanyahu relied on this assessment, which Israeli intelligence saw as more alarming than US agencies did, to launch the military campaign against Iran's nuclear program.

Between 2025 and 2026, he led two major military campaigns against Iran.

The first, known as the "Twelve-Day War," took place in June 2025. He ordered strikes on the Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites and on Iranian military targets. Iran fired missiles at Tel Aviv in response. The United States struck the underground Fordow site, which Israeli aircraft could not reach. A ceasefire was reached on June 24, 2025.

He launched a second, broader campaign in late February 2026, with coordinated Israeli-American strikes. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed in these strikes. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, succeeded him on March 8, 2026.

A ceasefire was reached on April 8, 2026, but the situation remains tense. Iran keeps up pressure on the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States has imposed a naval blockade on some Iranian ports. In late September 2026, Donald Trump rejected an Iranian offer of Qatari mediation and was considering new strikes.

Since late February 2026, Iran has stopped all cooperation with the IAEA and has blocked access to about twenty declared sites. As a result, the true size of its remaining program is uncertain. In September 2026, Netanyahu told the United Arab Emirates that Israeli intelligence had seen renewed work at a site nicknamed "Pickaxe Mountain," but he did not confirm that enrichment had resumed.

The relationship between Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump spans both of the US president's terms. It grew even stronger during the second.

The first term (2017-2021)

During Trump's first term, the US administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved its embassy there in 2018. It recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan in 2019 and withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, which Netanyahu had long demanded. It also sponsored the Abraham Accords in 2020.

The second term (since 2025)

On February 4, 2025, Netanyahu became the first foreign leader Trump received at the White House after his re-election.

Gaza

Gaza became a central issue between the two leaders. On September 29, 2025, at the White House, Trump presented a multi-stage plan to end the war. It included the release of the hostages, a ceasefire and new governance arrangements for Gaza. Netanyahu approved the plan, which led to a ceasefire on October 10, 2025.

Iran

Iran also became a central issue between the two leaders. In June 2025, the United States backed Israel in its confrontation with Iran. On February 28, 2026, the two countries launched a joint military operation against Iran, in which Ali Khamenei was killed.

Netanyahu's trial

Netanyahu's trial also became an issue between the two leaders. In November 2025, Trump wrote to President Isaac Herzog asking him to pardon Netanyahu. In April 2026, Herzog proposed mediation between Netanyahu's legal team and the attorney general. As of mid-September 2026, no decision had been made on the pardon request.

Public disagreements

This close relationship has not prevented public disagreements.

On June 24, 2025, after Iran violated the ceasefire, Israel prepared a retaliatory strike on Tehran. Trump publicly criticized both sides and demanded that the operation stop. After a phone call with him, Netanyahu limited the response to a single target, a radar site outside the city.

On December 13, 2025, an Israeli strike in Gaza killed Raed Saad, deputy head of Hamas's military wing. According to Axios, citing US officials, Israel did not warn or consult Washington in advance. The White House sent Netanyahu a firm message, which an Israeli official described as milder.

On June 9, 2026, after Israeli strikes on Beirut and an Iranian response, Trump publicly warned Netanyahu that he could soon find himself alone.