If, as is often said, a week is a long time in politics, then this week in Israel felt like an eternity.
The country intensified its military offensive in Gaza, struck targets in Lebanon and Syria, and witnessed yet another dramatic reversal at the heart of government: the abrupt nomination – and even more abrupt cancellation – of a new head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).
Yet even that high-stakes personnel drama was eclipsed by something larger: the arrest of close aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein, under suspicion of accepting money from a lobbyist working on behalf of Qatar.
Any one of these developments – military escalation, a senior security shake-up, or arrests inside the Prime Minister’s inner circle – would have dominated the news cycle in a normal week. That they all unfolded in parallel made for a week of relentless turmoil.
Taken together, they paint a picture of a government under enormous strain – grappling with war and a still-unresolved hostage crisis, burgeoning and reinvigorated anti-government protests, and an appearance of managerial dysfunction, all as the public watches with growing fatigue.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, amid all this, flew to Hungary Wednesday evening for a four-day visit – his first trip abroad beyond the US since the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against him and former defense minister Yoav Gallant – released a video in response to the spreading Qatar-related scandal.
For what seemed like the umpteenth time, Netanyahu said there was nothing to the allegations. For what seemed like the umpteenth time, he said it was all part of a plot by “them” to drive a right-wing prime minister out of office. The refrain is getting wearisome.
So, too, is the automatic, unrelenting criticism of everything Netanyahu does. This dynamic was on display again this week in the Sharvit affair.
Netanyahu appointed, then un-appointed, former naval commander Eli Sharvit to replace current Shin Bet head Ronen Bar – assuming, of course, that the High Court of Justice will approve Bar’s dismissal. The Shin Bet, after all, is one of the agencies investigating aspects of the Qatargate affair.
When Netanyahu named Sharvit, National Unity chairman Benny Gantz praised Sharvit’s professional credentials but framed the timing of the appointment as part of Netanyahu’s “campaign against the judicial system,” warning it could lead Israel into a dangerous constitutional crisis. In other words, he criticized Netanyahu for the appointment.
And then, when Netanyahu reversed himself the next day and rescinded the appointment, Gantz shifted his tone. “This morning, Netanyahu once again demonstrated that, for him, political pressure outweighs the good of the state and its security,” he wrote on X. In other words, he criticized Netanyahu for undoing the appointment.
SHARVIT’S APPOINTMENT was announced Monday morning. By Tuesday morning, it was gone.
The reason? Political pressure – from within Netanyahu’s own coalition. Likud MK Tally Gotliv questioned why the nominee wasn’t someone from “the Right.” Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu of Otzma Yehudit went further, calling Sharvit a “Kaplanist” – a reference to the anti-judicial overhaul protest movement in which Sharvit once participated. He didn’t speak, organize, or lead a march. He simply showed up.
In the current political climate, that was enough to raise red flags.
Within hours of the backlash, sources close to Netanyahu began floating a secondary explanation: the Americans were unhappy with the appointment because of an op-ed Sharvit wrote in January criticizing US President Donald Trump’s climate policies. The article, published in the Calcalist financial daily while Sharvit was CEO of an alternative energy firm, was sharply worded but far from extraordinary.
That explanation strains credulity. Nevertheless, within hours, stalwart Israel backer Sen. Lindsey Graham echoed those concerns publicly. That raised eyebrows: it’s difficult to imagine Graham independently combing through Hebrew-language financial dailies for past op-eds by Israeli business executives. The more likely scenario is that someone in Jerusalem pointed him in that direction, hoping the senator’s statement would provide Netanyahu with an elegant justification for reversing course. After all, who wants to pick a fight with the Trump administration?
ALL OF THIS came just days before the High Court is set to rule on April 8 whether Netanyahu can dismiss Bar, given the Shin Bet chief’s involvement in examining elements of the Qatargate affair.
The perception that Netanyahu is seeking to remove Bar just as investigators close in on his office is problematic, even if no legal wrongdoing is ultimately found.
It’s in that context that the Sharvit appointment – and its reversal – needs to be seen. Was this a calculated move to preempt a court decision? Was the brouhaha in the coalition against the appointment just the result of a lousy vetting process? Or was this all, as Netanyahu’s fiercest critics maintained, just a decoy to distract attention from Qatargate?
Whatever the intent, the outcome feeds a growing perception that the Prime Minister’s Office is just not functioning as it should and that key decisions are being made on the fly without a clear strategy or process. That would be problematic in the best of times; during a war that this week turned more intensive, it’s even more troubling.
This perception was further strengthened when Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that he would name an interim Shin Bet head, just two weeks after he was reported to have said in a cabinet meeting that the security organization – reeling from its October 7 failures – needs a permanent head to lead it out of its crisis, and not more uncertainty and instability, which would come with an interim chief.
HOVERING ABOVE all of this is the blooming Qatargate scandal.
If the allegations are true that several of Netanyahu’s aides were getting money from Qatar to improve its image, it is indeed damning. According to reports, the aides briefed journalists in the name of “security officials,” portraying Qatar’s role in a positive light while casting Egypt and its role in a negative one.
Netanyahu, who was questioned by the police about the matter but is not a suspect, rejected the allegations outright. But as with many scandals, the details of the case may matter less than the cumulative effect: another week in which the Prime Minister’s Office dominates headlines for all the wrong reasons, and another reminder of how little bandwidth is left for policy and planning.
If Netanyahu’s claim that “they are out to get me” has become a familiar refrain, so, too, has the opposition’s insistence that everything he does is corrupt, cynical, or dangerous.
The result is a political conversation that often sounds like a loop: accusations, counteraccusations, denials, and outrage – and then do it all over again.
This doesn’t mean that the underlying concerns aren’t real. The Qatargate allegations, if substantiated, are serious. And the sudden firing of the Shin Bet chief – whether or not related – deserves scrutiny.
But the pattern itself is beginning to exhaust the public: Netanyahu does something. The opposition slams it. Netanyahu claims persecution. The public tunes out. And another week goes by.
ALL OF this played out while the military was active on three fronts. In Gaza, IDF forces pushed deeper into Khan Yunis and Rafah, and created another east-west corridor: the Morag Corridor. In Lebanon, the IAF struck Hezbollah targets again, including in Beirut. And the IAF hit air bases in southern Syria as well as military infrastructure near Damascus.
The Shin Bet, like the IDF and the Mossad, plays a critical role in securing Israel’s front lines and intercepting threats before they emerge. At a time when Israel’s enemies are probing for weakness, leadership uncertainty at the top of one of Israel’s key security services is less than ideal.
That is part of what made the Sharvit affair so jarring. Not that a nomination failed – such things happen – but that it was announced, reversed, and respun in such rapid succession.
All Israel's institutions being tested simultaneously
What this week also laid bare is the extent to which Israel’s institutions – political, legal, and security – are all being tested simultaneously. The High Court is now routinely asked to weigh in on executive decisions that, in quieter times, would not have required judicial intervention, with each decision likely to precipitate a constitutional crisis.
The Shin Bet is navigating both internal leadership instability and unprecedented operational demands. The Prime Minister’s Office finds itself entangled in legal investigations at the very moment when its focus needs to be on the innumerable non-scandal-related challenges facing the country.
The result is a governing system that appears overstretched, with key decision-makers juggling political survival, public pressure, and national security – all while the public’s confidence in their ability to manage any one of those things is becoming increasingly frayed.
Sharvit’s nomination. Its retraction. The Qatargate arrests. The ongoing war. Netanyahu’s trip to Hungary. Any one of these stories would have been enough to dominate the week; that they all happened simultaneously was nothing short of dizzying.
And perhaps that’s the defining feature of Israeli political life right now: not a single crisis, but many overlapping ones – each feeding off the others, each dragging down public confidence in the system. The government’s ability to navigate these overlapping challenges is not a given. What stands out is the frequency of these crises and their cumulative impact on governance and public confidence.
A government that spends more time firefighting than forward-planning risks losing its ability to lead effectively. At a moment when Israel faces existential threats from its enemies and internal divisions at home, this lack of coherence is a liability the country can ill afford.
For now, Israel’s institutions – its courts, security services, and even its public – are holding the line. But how long they can continue to do so under such relentless pressure remains an open question.
If this week felt like an eternity, it’s because it revealed the mounting cost of governing when every new crisis compounds the previous one, leaving the country feeling simply exhausted.
