https://arab.news/bzpng
In Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu, the state budget is no longer a fiscal document. It is a countdown clock. And when time threatens to run out, history suggests that Netanyahu does not look inward for compromise or reform — he looks outward for confrontation. War, or the specter of it, has become his most reliable political escape hatch.
The mechanics are well known. If the Israeli budget fails to pass its three readings in the Knesset by the legal deadline, the government collapses automatically. On paper, this is a democratic safeguard. In practice, under Netanyahu, it has become a trigger for manufactured urgency, existential rhetoric and — too often — military escalation. When his political survival is at stake, security crises have an uncanny habit of appearing.
This is not speculation pulled from thin air. Netanyahu’s entire political career is built on the fusion of personal survival with permanent crisis. He governs by fear, not consensus; by escalation, not resolution. When the coalition frays and the budget looks shaky, the language hardens, threats multiply and the drums of war grow louder — whether in Gaza, southern Lebanon, Syria or beyond. The message is always the same: now is not the time for politics; now is the time for “national unity.”
