Benjamin Netanyahu, seen here in October 2019, has been Israeli Prime Minister since 2009. He’s the longest-serving Israeli prime minister in history.
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Updated 5:06 PM ET, Wed June 2, 2021
Benjamin Netanyahu, seen here in October 2019, has been Israeli Prime Minister since 2009. He’s the longest-serving Israeli prime minister in history.
Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images
Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving Israeli prime minister in history, might soon find himself out of power.
A coalition of Israeli political parties announced Wednesday night that they had agreed to a deal to form a new government. The coalition agreement must now pass a vote of confidence in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, before a new government and prime minister is sworn in.
If a new government is sworn in, it would bring an end to Netanyahu’s 12 years as prime minister. Netanyahu has been prime minister since 2009, but this is his second time leading Israel’s government. In 1996, he became Israel’s youngest-ever prime minister, and he served until 1999.
Since 2005, Netanyahu had led Israel’s right-wing Likud party.
A 17-year-old Netanyahu, right, sits with a friend at the entrance to his family home in Jerusalem in 1967. Netanyahu spent his teenage years in the United States, going to high school in Philadelphia.
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Netanyahu, right, poses with a friend in the Judean Desert in 1968.
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Netanyahu serves in the Sayeret Matkal, an elite commando unit of the Israeli army, in 1971. He spent five years in the unit.
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Netanyahu shakes hands with Israeli President Zalman Shazar during a 1972 ceremony honoring Sayeret Matkal soldiers who freed hostages in a hijacking earlier that year.
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Netanyahu and his first wife, Miriam, in 1980.
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Netanyahu and his daughter, Noa, in 1980. Netanyahu has three children in all.
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In 1986, Netanyahu speaks with Sorin Hershko, one of the Israeli soldiers wounded in Operation Entebbe. It was the 10th anniversary of Operation Entebbe, a dramatic rescue of Jewish hostages at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport. Netanyahu’s brother, Yonatan, was killed leading Operation Entebbe in 1976. Affected by his brother’s death, Netanyahu organized two international conferences on ways to combat terrorism — one in 1979 and another in 1984.
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From 1984 to 1988, Netanyahu was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.
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Netanyahu talks to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir while visiting New York’s Central Park in 1987.
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Netanyahu, as Israel’s deputy foreign minister, goes through some papers as Government Secretary Elyakim Rubinstein recites morning prayers during a flight to Washington, DC, in 1989.
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Shamir speaks with Netanyahu at a Middle East peace conference in Madrid in 1991.
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Netanyahu celebrates after being elected chairman of the right-wing Likud party on March 21, 1993.
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Netanyahu and former foreign minister David Levy sit in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, during the vote for a new Israeli President on March 24, 1993.
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Netanyahu meets with King Hussein of Jordan, center, and Crown Prince Hassan in 1994. It was Netanyahu’s first visit to Jordan.
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Netanyahu shakes hands with outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres before taking the office himself in June 1996. At 46 years old, Netanyahu was the youngest-ever Israeli prime minister.
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Netanyahu meets with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the first time in September 1996. They met at an Israeli army base at the Erez Checkpoint in Gaza.
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Netanyahu meets with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Washington, DC, in February 1997.
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Netanyahu spends the day on the beach with his wife, Sara, and son Avner in Caesarea, Israel, in August 1997.
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Actor Kirk Douglas holds the King David Award, presented to him by the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah during a dinner in Beverly Hills, California, in November 1997. Douglas was honored for his inspirational commitment to Israel and the Jewish people and in recognition of his new book “Climbing the Mountain.” On the right is Rabbi Nachum Braverman, director of the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah.
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Netanyahu looks through binoculars as he and the Israeli Cabinet tour the West Bank in December 1997.
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Netanyahu and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan meet in Annan’s office in New York in May 1998.
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From left, Arafat, King Hussein, US President Bill Clinton and Netanyahu sign an interim Middle East peace agreement in October 1998.
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Netanyahu thanks a crowd of supporters at a Likud party meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, in May 1999. The outgoing Prime Minister announced that he was quitting the Knesset and stepping down as party leader 10 days after being defeated in elections.
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Netanyahu testifies before a US House committee on September 20, 2001. The committee was conducting hearings on terrorism following the September 11 attacks.
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Netanyahu, as Israel’s foreign minister, laughs with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the start of a Likud convention in Tel Aviv, Israel, in November 2002.
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Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, are seen at a polling station in Jerusalem in August 2007. He was once again elected as head of the Likud party.
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Netanyahu shakes hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres in February 2009 after winning backing from the Israeli parliament to become prime minister again. A close election between Netanyahu and rival Tzipi Livni had left the results unclear until the parliament’s decision.
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From left, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Netanyahu, US President Barack Obama, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II walk to the East Room of the White House to make statements on the Middle East peace process in September 2010.
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Obama meets with Netanyahu at the White House in September 2010.
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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks on as Abbas and Netanyahu shake hands in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, in September 2010 during a second round of Middle East peace talks.
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British Prime Minister David Cameron welcomes Netanyahu to No. 10 Downing Street in London in May 2011.
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Netanyahu addresses a joint session of the US Congress in May 2011. He said that he was prepared to make “painful compromises” for a peace settlement with the Palestinians, but he repeated that Israel will not accept a return to its pre-1967 boundaries.
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Netanyahu uses a diagram of a bomb to describe Iran’s nuclear program while delivering an address to the UN General Assembly in September 2012. Netanyahu exhorted the General Assembly to draw “a clear red line” to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
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Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman of the Likud-Beiteinu coalition party greet supporters as they arrive on stage on election night in January 2013.
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Netanyahu speaks at the UN General Assembly in October 2013. He accused Iranian President Hassan Rouhani of seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and described him as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a wolf who thinks he can pull the wool over the eyes of the international community.” An Iranian representative rejected Netanyahu’s accusations, calling them “inflammatory” and “unfounded.”
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In December 2014, Netanyahu called for early elections as he fired two key ministers for opposing government policy.
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Netanyahu is greeted by members of US Congress as he arrives to speak in the House chamber in March 2015. He warned that a proposed agreement between world powers and Iran was “a bad deal” that would not stop Tehran from getting nuclear weapons.
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Netanyahu and his family take a vacation in southern Israel in April 2015.
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Netanyahu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel talk in Berlin in October 2015.
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Netanyahu speaks to the press in Tel Aviv, Israel, in June 2016. A day earlier, two attackers identified as Palestinians opened fire at a popular food and shopping complex near the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, killing four Israelis and sending other patrons scrambling to safety.
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Netanyahu stands next to US President Barack Obama as they attend the funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres in September 2016.
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Netanyahu visits Moriah College in Sydney in February 2017. It was the first time an Israeli prime minister had visited Australia.
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Netanyahu speaks to US President Donald Trump in May 2017. Trump visited Israel and the West Bank during his first foreign trip as President.
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Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, pose for a photo at the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, in January 2018.
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Netanyahu, speaking at a security conference in Germany in February 2018, holds up what he claimed was a piece of an Iranian drone that was shot down after it flew over Israeli territory.
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Netanyahu, giving a speech at the Ministry of Defense in April 2018, accused Iran of “brazenly lying” over its nuclear ambitions. He said Israel had uncovered files that prove his allegation and that the Islamic republic was keeping an “atomic archive” at a secret compound. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called Netanyahu’s comments “childish” and “laughable.”
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From left, Netanyahu sits beside senior White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin during the opening of the new US Embassy in Jerusalem in May 2018.
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Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, pose for a photo with Russian President Vladimir Putin after talks in Moscow in February 2019.
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The Netanyahus cast their votes during Israel’s parliamentary elections in April 2019. The election was seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s long tenure as prime minister.
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Netanyahu greets supporters in April 2019.
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An election banner on a Jerusalem building, photographed in September 2019, shows Netanyahu shaking hands with US President Donald Trump. Trump was incredibly popular in Israel — far more popular than he was in the United States.
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Netanyahu meets British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London in September 2019.
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Netanyahu and Israeli Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz reach to shake hands during a state memorial ceremony for former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his wife, Leah, in November 2019. Exit polls for a repeat general election failed to give either of the political rivals a majority in the new parliament.
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Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, attend a Likud party celebration in Tel Aviv, Israel, in March 2020. Likud won 59 seats in the general election but came up three seats short of a majority.
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From left, Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani, Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan hold up documents at the White House after participating in the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020. The agreement normalized relations between Israel and the two Gulf nations.
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Netanyahu receives a second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine in Ramat Gan, Israel, in January 2021.
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Netanyahu comes out of a Jerusalem courtroom during the evidence-hearing stage of his corruption trial in April 2021. Netanyahu faces charges in three separate cases. He has denied the charges, describing them as a media-fueled witch hunt against him.
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Netanyahu briefs ambassadors at the Hakirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, in May 2021. Fighting erupted between Israelis and Palestinians on May 10 as Palestinian militants in Gaza started firing rockets at Israel, which responded with airstrikes across Gaza. It was one of the area’s worst rounds of violence since the 2014 Gaza War.
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Netanyahu meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May 2021. Blinken was also in the region to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and visit Egypt and Jordan.
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Netanyahu delivers a statement in Jerusalem in May 2021, after Naftali Bennett, leader of the small right-wing party Yamina, announced that he would be working toward a coalition agreement with Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist party Yesh Atid, to join a new government. Netanyahu denounced Bennett as a man who cared about nothing other than becoming prime minister.
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