For the past 10 months, Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to apologize for leaving Israel vulnerable to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
After the deaths of 1,200 people and the abduction of hundreds more, a traumatized Israeli public heard abject admissions of responsibility from the heads of the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, the country’s domestic security service, but none from Netanyahu, who had been Prime Minister for almost a year when the attack happened, and had presided over a more than 10-year strategy of tacit acceptance of Hamas rule in Gaza. His only apology was for a social media post blaming his own security chiefs for failing to foil the assault. So, early in a 66-minute conversation with TIME on Aug. 4 in the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, the question is, Would he make an apology?
“Apologize?” he asks back. “Of course, of course. I am sorry, deeply, that something like this happened. And you always look back and you say, Could we have done things that would have prevented it?”
For Netanyahu, who first occupied the dowdy Kaplan Street offices in 1996, it’s a fraught question. Through a combination of electoral vicissitudes, sweeping regional changes, and his own political gifts, his almost 17-year cumulative tenure is longer than that of anyone else who has led Israel, a country only two years older than he is. Over that span, Netanyahu’s political endurance has been built around one consistent argument: that he’s the only leader who can ensure Israel’s safety.
But in the wake of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, with more than 40,000 Gazans dead in the ensuing conflict, Israel under Netanyahu is not blessed with peace but besieged by war. As we speak, the country is on edge for an expected aerial attack from Iran, the second in four months. Shops are shuttered, and pedestrians stay within sprinting distance of bomb shelters. The fighting is ongoing in Gaza, with more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas. Much to the frustration of the Biden Administration, Netanyahu still has not articulated a credible plan to end the war or a vision for how the Israelis and the Palestinians can peacefully coexist. Instead, he’s bracing for escalating conflict on even more fronts: in the north with Hezbollah in Lebanon; in the Gulf with the Houthis in Yemen; and most of all, with Israel’s nemesis Iran. “We’re facing not merely Hamas,” Netanyahu says. “We’re facing a full-fledged Iranian axis, and we understand that we have to organize ourselves for
