Former Justice Minister Haim Ramon says Netanyahu’s coalition is stable and will likely complete its term, crediting the Prime Minister’s resilience and the opposition’s “pitiful weakness.
Former Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon offered a striking political assessment this week, asserting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government faces no serious threat and is poised to complete its full term, thanks to what he called the “utter weakness” and “embarrassing disarray” of Israel’s opposition parties.
Speaking to 103 FM Radio, Ramon said bluntly:
“Netanyahu wants to serve until the end of his term. If someone had told him on October 7th that he would enter the final year of his term with better poll numbers than before the war, he would’ve said, ‘Sir, you’re hallucinating, that’s pure fantasy.’”
According to Ramon, elections will likely take place “close to their scheduled time — sometime between April and October,” arguing that Netanyahu now enjoys a position of relative stability after months of crisis.
“The opposition,” he added, “is not only divided but directionless. It’s an embarrassing sight. I was young and now I’m old, and I don’t recall an opposition so pitiful. They call it ‘the opposition bloc’; I’ve never seen a bloc so crumbly.”
Ramon pointed to the recent Knesset vote on sovereignty in Judea and Samaria as proof of the opposition’s dysfunction.
“Yair Lapid entered the plenum at the last minute with his faction leader. He has 24 MKs. If some of them had shown up, the proposal would have been defeated. And this was on one of the most ideological matters — Judea and Samaria.”
The sovereignty bill, which passed its preliminary reading by just one vote (25–24), underscored not only Netanyahu’s tight control over parliamentary arithmetic but also the opposition’s disorganization, as several members were absent or abstained from one of Israel’s most symbolically charged debates.
Ramon, once a political adversary of Netanyahu, credited the Prime Minister’s persistence and tactical discipline for surviving one of Israel’s most turbulent years. “It’s not that he’s a political giant,” Ramon quipped. “The opposition is simply a group of political dwarfs.”
In his analysis, Netanyahu’s strength now lies less in his own popularity than in the vacuum opposite him. Despite international pressure, Gaza ceasefire complexities, and the sovereignty controversy, Netanyahu’s Likud-led bloc remains neck-and-neck with Israel’s fragmented opposition in recent polls — a fact Ramon said reflects “a political landscape with no credible alternative.”
If Ramon’s forecast proves correct, Netanyahu could become one of Israel’s few leaders to complete a full term during wartime, steering the nation through reconstruction, regional realignments, and the long-awaited normalization efforts linked to Trump’s Gaza peace framework.
For now, Israel’s longest-serving leader appears determined to end his term on his own terms — and, as Ramon put it, “in a political field where his rivals can barely reach his knees.”
