Jerusalem: Benjamin Netanyahu has rarely needed peace to prove his political relevance. He needs danger. With Israel heading towards elections on October 27, Netanyahu finds himself in an unusually vulnerable position. His Likud party is trailing in several recent polls, while his governing bloc has no assured path to a majority.
According to TRTworld.com, after years of war, Israelis are exhausted, and Netanyahu's promise of total victory has failed to materialize. His claim to be Israel's indispensable security leader is being tested. Now, Netanyahu appears to have found a new enemy: Trkiye. On August 18, Israeli warplanes struck the Abu al-Duhur military airbase in northern Syria. Netanyahu's office claimed Syria was preparing to allow Turkish forces to deploy there, threatening Israeli security. Trkiye denied establishing such a presence, while Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani stated there were no plans for a permanent Turkish base.
What followed was almost as significant as the strike itself. Rather than treating it as a discreet military operation, Netanyahu turned it into a public confrontation. He issued a one-word warning to Trkiye, while Defence Minister Israel Katz accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of embarking on dangerous adventures in Syria. However, some within Israel's own security establishment found the rhetoric alarming. Israeli media reported concerns among security officials that Netanyahu and Katz were risking unnecessary escalation with Trkiye, and that the confrontation was becoming entangled with election politics.
Washington also appeared uncomfortable. Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Trkiye and President Donald Trump's special envoy for Syria, described the Israeli strike as an unnecessary escalation. More extraordinarily, he publicly raised the possibility that Israel was baiting Trkiye into confrontation because such a clash could have domestic political value before the election. US intelligence, Barrack said, did not support Israel's assertion that Turkish military assets were being moved into the base, although Israeli officials insist they possessed intelligence indicating otherwise.
The question arises: why target Trkiye, and why now? There is a deeper question here than Netanyahu's electoral calculations. Describing Israel's actions simply as a response to security concerns risks accepting Israel's own definition of security without interrogating what that definition has come to mean. Israel was not responding to Turkish troops entering Israeli territory. It bombed Syria-a sovereign country-to pre-empt an alleged Turkish military presence on Syrian soil. That distinction matters.
Israel has occupied Syrian territory, established what it calls a security zone beyond its internationally recognized frontier, repeatedly bombed Syrian military infrastructure, and insisted upon its freedom to operate militarily inside the country. Yet, when Syria attempts to rebuild military capabilities or develops relationships with another regional power, Israel presents that too as a threat to its security. The contradiction points towards a much larger problem with Israel's regional doctrine: Netanyahu's fantastical conception of absolute security in Israel increasingly appears to require the permanent insecurity of everyone around it.
Netanyahu's political narrative is consistent: he presents himself as the essential figure who alone can protect Israel from existential threats. This time, however, he may have chosen an adversary he cannot intimidate, dominate, or control. Politically, he needs something less than war but more than peace. He needs the politics of permanent threat: a powerful adversary, an approaching danger, and Netanyahu once again presenting himself as the indispensable man standing between Israel and catastrophe. This is not simply an Israeli electoral strategy. Israel's domestic politics do not remain inside Israel's borders.
In his attempt to rescue his own political future, Netanyahu has pushed the threat narrative to a fantastical level he cannot realistically translate into action, resorting instead to provocations against Trkiye. His rhetoric is deliberately louder than the power behind it: he needs the appearance of confrontation, not the war his words imply. As the election approaches, Netanyahu needs an enemy powerful enough to frighten Israeli voters-and a crisis large enough to make his own political survival appear synonymous with Israel's. Whether Israel has found such an enemy is uncertain, but what is clear is that Netanyahu may not be able to afford not to have one.