Netanyahu's Caretaker War Powers: A Constitutional Grey Zone Built for One Man's Survival

Israeli law lets a caretaker PM wage war if framed as urgent. Netanyahu is testing that loophole against Iran — with his own military, opposition, and Washington all pushing back.

Benjamin Netanyahu's government lost its parliamentary majority in last month's elections, but Israeli Basic Law Article 30 keeps the caretaker cabinet fully empowered until a successor is sworn in. That process could take months as opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot struggles to assemble a coalition. In the interim, Netanyahu retains the legal authority to start a war — and reportedly wants to use it.

The constitutional constraint is supposed to be the Supreme Court's "duty of restraint" doctrine, which bars outgoing governments from irreversible policy moves unless urgent. But as international law professor Neve Gordon and researcher Or Asher both note, security decisions are the clearest exception. The Supreme Court has historically refused to intervene in war-making, and parliamentary oversight is at its weakest in the weeks after a new Knesset convenes before committees are formed. The guardrails are real in theory, decorative in practice. Israeli media reported Wednesday that the security cabinet ordered the military to step up preparations for an attack on Iran. This followed reports that Netanyahu has been pressing Trump in repeated phone calls — at least one described as heated — for a joint military campaign against Tehran. US Central Command dismissed the reports as "mere speculation," while Israel's Channel 13 reported that the Israeli military establishment itself sees no urgent need to strike. The gap between what the PM wants and what every institutional actor around him recommends is unusually wide. The opposition has drawn its line. Avigdor Lieberman demanded no war decisions without parliamentary oversight and full security-establishment agreement. Eisenkot wrote to Netanyahu warning that deploying forces "without a direct and immediate threat that cannot wait could have devastating consequences for Israeli democracy and public trust." Netanyahu responded by insisting all decisions are based solely on "security considerations" — the same framing the legal exception requires. The precedent Netanyahu is likely counting on is his own. In May 2021, while coalition negotiations to replace him were underway, he launched an 11-day war in Gaza that killed at least 260 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. That conflict temporarily stalled government formation, though a Bennett-Lapid coalition replaced him the following month. Former PMs Ehud Olmert and Yair Lapid also ordered military action in Gaza from caretaker positions — Olmert's 2008 operation killed about 1,400 Palestinians. The critical variable this time is Washington. The US has signaled it prefers economic pressure on Iran over military escalation. Analyst Anders Persson notes a joint US-Israeli operation would be easier to sell domestically, but "the more openly Netanyahu provokes Iran, and the less support he receives from Trump, the harder it will be for him to get away with it." Gordon puts it bluntly: Netanyahu's problem "is not the Israeli public, but what seems to be a loss of appetite in the US." The domestic politics cut both ways. Analyst Ehab Jabareen expects Israelis to "rally around the flag" if missiles start flying, but warns that tells you nothing about whether they think the war was justified. The harder test comes when reservists are called up again, families return to shelters, and the government must explain what this campaign achieves that the last one didn't. The "why now" question is the one Netanyahu cannot answer without admitting the calendar of coalition formation.