Even though he has never faced serious opposition for the wars he launched in Gaza and Lebanon, neither domestically nor on the international stage, Benjamin Netanyahu is freer than ever to continue waging them as he sees fit. In the space of a few hours, on the night of Tuesday, November 5 to Wednesday, November 6, the prime minister sacked his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who was calling to end military operations in Gaza, and saw Donald Trump win the presidential elections against Kamala Harris. Both internally and externally, he has been freed from two possible obstacles.

There are just over 70 days to go before Trump is inaugurated in Washington. In the meantime, like his American counterpart, Netanyahu will have to deal with judicial threats. He is scheduled to appear as a witness on December 2 in a corruption trial that began in 2020. But he can already focus on increasing his assaults against a broad spectrum of targets: Iran, the Israeli domestic opposition and international institutions, among others.

Trump has repeatedly said that, above all, he wants "peace" in the Middle East. But by this, he means a peace for the strong, with Israel at the center and international law relegated to the sidelines. In September, before the Israeli-American Council, he gave himself the title of "protector" of Israel. At the time, he focused on this topic for some of his attacks on his Democratic presidential opponent Harris, claiming that if she were elected, Israel would be wiped off the map "in two years."

For Trump, Harris belongs to the category of those pushing Israel for a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, for whom he has nothing but contempt − much to Netanyahu's satisfaction, who until Tuesday evening was arguing with his own defense minister about this. Gallant had most of the military leadership behind him. He had also developed an excellent relationship with the Biden administration, which was therefore in a position to influence, however modestly, Israel's decision-making concerning the war. With Harris out of the picture and Gallant sacked and replaced by Israel Katz − who is completely aligned with the prime minister's positions − two potential brakes have disappeared.

But there are others. Netanyahu has his sights set on the army chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, who is on the same page as Gallant, but also the head of the Shin Bet (domestic intelligence), Ronen Bar, and the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, whom he has described as "adversarial." Bar was pushing for an agreement with Hamas to secure the hostages' release, to the point of being called "weak" by the prime minister. Netanyahu is determined to pursue the war to a vague "total victory," in order to satisfy the wishes of his far-right partners in the government coalition.

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