For what it’s worth, a large portion of Zionist—I’d wager a majority of those in Israel, and a very large majority elsewhere in the world—think that settlements suck and Israel needs to work much harder to stop their expansion. And Netanyahu is extremely unpopular internationally, and there’s no way he’ll win another election in Israel. But there’s some context—on the practical level and on the political level—that might be helpful to understand why this problem persists.

First, why is Netanyahu prime minister again? His second real rise to power occurred in 2009. Back in 2005, Netanyahu advocated against Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. The Sharon government went ahead with it, but terrorism in Gaza skyrocketed as a result. So Netanyahu was seen by many as the conservative who was right all along, the only one who really wanted to keep Israelis safe from terrorists. But over time, Israelis slowly realized that his way was somehow just as shitty, and also that he was a corrupt piece of shit.

So Netanyahu was brought on criminal charges for corruption.

Israel had like 87 elections, and kept trying to form a majority coalition in its government. It kind of did a couple of times, but it fell apart fast, until Netanyahu managed to form a coalition again. Except now, his main goal was to not go to prison, so he was pretty fucking desperate. He cozied up to far-right nuts and made a really strange government. Their actions led to massive protests in Israel, and they didn’t feel like negotiating with the opposition or listening to protestors. They made judicial reforms, they engaged in harsher / anti-Palestinian / super-fucking-racist policies, and made other changes to Israeli law that generally just sucked.

With regards to settlements… This is going to be a dramatically oversimplified take, and some portion of settlements are on disputed territory, but let’s focus on the straight up West Bank territory… basically, the usual pattern is, Israelis building in Palestine is generally against Israeli law, but some developers do it anyway, and the government generally punishes them, but also doesn’t condone bombing settlements or murdering Israeli civilians because they moved into those settlements (they usually move there because they can’t afford to live in more expensive parts of Israel, or because they work in the West Bank, but sometimes because they’re assholes who want to expand Israeli territory for some dumb religious reason). And basically, the far right is less interested in punishing, more interested in protecting. And there’s also some licensing thing I don’t really understand… And freedom of movement issues, and a whole lot of other pieces, but yeah, there are a lot of complicated factors. But some of the real nutjobs in Netanyahu’s coalition are actually pro-settlement, so… that sucks.

Also, people now blame him for mistakes surrounding the attack, which… We’re not going to dig into, because people are going to make it something it isn’t.