This is how Netanyahu prolongs the war in Gaza to stay in power.

Jerusalem/Tel-AvivWhen Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, sparking war in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political career seemed doomed. Nearly two years later, the war continues, and Netanyahu has achieved a rare position of domestic strength.

Our six-month investigation, containing never-before-seen details, tells the behind-the-scenes story of how Netanyahu survived and even thrived as the war dragged on. The article takes readers into Netanyahu's hospital room in July 2023, into his home just minutes after the October 7 attack began, into Israeli military headquarters in the days following, and into various ceasefire negotiations and Israeli cabinet discussions throughout the 2020s. After interviewing more than 110 officials from Israel, the United States, and the Arab world, and reviewing dozens of official documents, we reveal how Netanyahu's actions first made Israel more vulnerable to the October 7 disaster and then contributed to prolonging and expanding the war that resulted. Unexpectedly, the expansion of the war allowed Israel to defeat Hezbollah and strike at Iran. But in Gaza, it has meant unchecked suffering for Palestinians, the deaths of Israeli hostages, and allowed Netanyahu to postpone taking responsibility. Here are the five takeaways from the investigation.

Netanyahu ignored warnings of an imminent attack

As Netanyahu recovered in his pajamas in the hospital in July 2023, a veteran general brought him a troubling intelligence report.

Netanyahu ignored these and other warnings, and his government pressed ahead with reform, passing a few hours later a law curtailing the independence of the judiciary, sparking more protests. Two days later, Hamas leaders again pointed to the instability in Israel and for a long time.

Netanyahu shied away from responsibility for the October 7 attack.

Minutes after the October 2023 attack began, at the lowest point of his political career, Netanyahu was already sowing the seeds for his personal survival. "I don't see anything in the intelligence," he said in one of his first calls that day. It was his first maneuver to deflect blame and a glimpse of how he would try to prolong his political career by blaming the heads of security and intelligence.

While fighting was still raging in southern Israel, Netanyahu's team reported influencers sympathetic, telling them that the generals were to blame for Israel's worst defensive failure. At the same time, they tried to prevent the leak of conversations that could compromise the prime minister, prevented the military from officially recording their meetings with him, and even ordered the generals—including Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff—to be searched for hidden microphones.

Later, Netanyahu's team ordered archivists to alter the official records of his first calls on October 7. They then leaked a confidential document to a foreign newspaper—bypassing Israeli military censorship—to discredit critical voices, including relatives of the hostages kidnapped in Gaza.

Prolonging truce negotiations to maintain the governing coalition

In the opening hours of the war, Netanyahu rejected an offer from the opposition leader to form a unity government, preferring to maintain the governing coalition with his far-right allies, who were determined to keep him in power after the war was over.

Whenever conditions for a ceasefire seemed ripe, Netanyahu would point to new military objectives that he had previously dismissed and that senior military officials believed were not worth the cost of achieving.

Neglecting the historic agreement with Saudi Arabia

In negotiations with the US in May 2024, the Saudi regime took a risky step and signaled its willingness to establish formal relations with Israel—provided the war in Gaza ended, Washington made concessions to Saudi Arabia, and Israel began the process of recognizing a Palestinian state. "We're done with this," Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said at a late-night meeting.

Netanyahu's resistance to pursuing this path was one of the many sources of tension with the Biden administration. As the death toll in Gaza mounted in December 2023, Biden grew so frustrated in a call with Netanyahu that he abruptly hung up. When truce negotiations stalled months later, US officials cited polls showing that more than 50% of Israelis preferred a deal to release hostages to continuing the war. "Not 50% of my voters," Netanyahu responded.

Wars in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran strengthen Netanyahu's position

At the start of the war, Netanyahu avoided measures that could escalate the conflict into all-out war with Hezbollah and Iran, key Hamas allies. He canceled a major attack on Hezbollah in the war's opening days and avoided uncontrolled escalations with Tehran.

But nearly a year later, a series of unexpected intelligence successes allowed Israel to kill several senior Hezbollah commanders. Emboldened, Netanyahu ordered the assassination of Hezbollah's leader and the invasion of its stronghold in southern Lebanon, and destroyed much of its arsenal. Israel also managed to eliminate much of Iran's air defense system—significantly undermining the threat it posed to Tehran. Neither Iran nor Hezbollah were able to protect Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from a rebel advance, leading to the fall of another Israeli enemy.

With Tehran unusually vulnerable, Netanyahu launched an attack on Iran, which became the centerpiece of his political career. Celebrated as a victory in Israel, the military campaign left Netanyahu's party in a stronger position in the polls than at any point since October 2023.