As the Israeli opposition seeks to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speculation has focused on the possible fate of the current government’s most radical and right-wing elements, including parties led by staunchly pro-settler Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have been convicted of inciting terrorism.
While all members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, with the unwavering support of opposition politicians hoping to supplant them, have supported Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and attacks on regional states, it is Smotrich and Ben-Gvir who have been the focus of international attention and the subject of criticism from Western governments.
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Amid talk of Netanyahu seeking to form a unity government with Eisenkot, both ministers have publicly opposed a government led by the former chief of staff.
Before the vote, Ben-Gvir took the unusual step of claiming that Netanyahu now had a choice between choosing himself to “save Israel” or Eisenkot.
Smotrich, meanwhile, warned his ultra-Orthodox political allies against entering into negotiations with Eisenkot, saying he would “abandon” them once he uses their votes to oust Netanyahu.
The legacy of hatred
Netanyahu formed a coalition government with Ben-Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) and Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party in 2022, giving them both several of Israel’s most important ministerial posts. Smotrich became finance minister, granting him control of the Israeli budget and a number of institutions in the occupied West Bank, while Ben-Gvir was named national security minister.
Drawing on a wellspring of hardline Zionism, Jewish supremacy and what critics describe as unabashed racism, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have leveraged their political influence to advance Israel’s hardest-line policies over the past three years. They also transformed their ministries to reflect their radical ideological projects.
Both have been enthusiastic supporters of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, repeatedly threatening to withdraw their support for the government when it appeared that Netanyahu might weaken in the face of international pressure over large numbers of civilian deaths, famine and the withholding of aid.
In September 2025, Ben-Gvir threatened to overthrow the government if Hamas persisted after the captives were released under US President Donald Trump’s proposed plan for Gaza. Both ministers have repeatedly called for the annexation, colonization and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Smotrich encouraged the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and, in the eyes of his opponents, is responsible for the explosion of settler violence and pogroms across the occupied territory.
In June 2025, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are sanctioned by a wave of Western countries. Ireland and the Netherlands imposed travel bans on the two ministers, while other countries froze their assets. Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin said the measures were taken because of their “common desire to see the elimination of Palestinians from Palestine.”
However, analysts say the ministers and their movements should not be treated as a homogenous entity nor isolated from Israeli politics in general.
“I would say we should not treat Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as one bloc, because excluding the government would affect them in opposite ways,” Arie Perliger of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, who has conducted studies of the far right in Israel, Europe and the United States, told Al Jazeera. “Ben Gvir’s power is populist and performative, and the opposition suits him.”
Ben-Gvir’s roots in the banned Kahanist movement, in tandem with many right-wing movements, relied on their historical exclusion from power as evidence of betrayal by the establishment, he added.
Smotrich, for his part, had used his position as finance minister to co-opt part of the colonization program and impose his explicitly Zionist agenda. This means it would have more to lose if it were “cut off from budgets, portfolios and control over implementation policy”.
“Smotrich’s case is the opposite. His achievements were more bureaucratic than rhetorical,” Perliger said.
Lasting damage
Both figures have been accused of transforming their ministries in ways that will endure long after they leave government.
As part of the 2022 deal with Netanyahu that guaranteed his financial portfolio, Smotrich was given the additional role of minister in the Defense Ministry. This gave him sweeping powers over much of the Israeli-run civil administration in the occupied West Bank.
From there, he used his position to establish a separate settlement administration and to rapidly accelerate the expansion of illegal settlements across the occupied territory. In August 2025, he announced the relaunch of the E1 settlement plan, which he said would bury “the idea of a Palestinian state”.
Ben-Gvir was accused of quickly politicizing the Israeli police under his command and essentially shaping them to reflect his own far-right vision. He also introduced sweeping changes to the prison service, including severe restrictions on the conditions and rights of Palestinian prisoners, whose institutional legacy could last for years.
“It’s about personnel, procedures and facts on the ground and fixing it requires sustained political will,” Perliger added. He doubts an opposition government could reverse the changes introduced by ministers.
It was also unlikely that excluding the two men from the mainstream of Israeli politics would undermine support for these groups, according to Roi Zur, an assistant professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex.
Smotrich’s Religious Zionist movement dates back to the 1967 war and, along with Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, he enjoys the support of about 10 percent of the Israeli electorate.
“They are stable and will be there for many years… (They) cater to very similar types of people in Israel,” Zur told Al Jazeera.
Their lasting legacy could be the official sanction of the hatred towards the Palestinians that, long purged, exploded following the October 7 attacks carried out by Hamas. Thanks to their actions, and those of other right-wing members of Netanyahu’s coalition, the value of Palestinian lives in the eyes of Israelis has fallen to an unprecedented level.
The widely publicized killing of more than 74,000 people in the genocidal war on Gaza, the deliberate neglect of Palestinian townships within Israel’s borders, where crime and murder have become an epidemic, and the brutal conditions imposed on Palestinian prisoners have not been hidden but rather celebrated. Ben-Gvir was a leading figure in the Knesset’s passage of a death penalty law that targets only Palestinians.
Meanwhile, pogroms against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank continue without any significant government sanctions.
“Violence is a constant danger,” said Aida Touma-Suleiman, a former Palestinian lawmaker from the left-wing Hadash party. “People are afraid in the streets, on the buses, everywhere. You have to be careful to speak Arabic, wherever you are.”
Under the last Netanyahu government, apartheid against the Palestinians, which had long existed in Israel, had taken root and transformed into a version of fascism, Touma-Suleiman said.
“Apartheid is a series of laws that discriminate on the basis of race. Fascism is when discrimination and racism are carried into the soul,” she told Al Jazeera.
“Netanyahu and his allies didn’t just give permission to be racist; they almost made it a sign of patriotism – that’s normal.”
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