Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dominated his country’s politics for the last four decades, and his influence will not end even if Israelis vote him out of office. Over the course of his tenure as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu has dramatically reset the terms of the country’s national security politics. His persistent rejection of Palestinian statehood has helped push the idea firmly out of mainstream debates, and his longtime agitation for war against Iran is now widely accepted policy across Israel’s political and security establishment.

Before his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu was already a divisive figure. In 1993, as the leader of the opposition, he likened Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Oslo agreement with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler ahead of World War II.…