[3][4] His mother, Tzila Segal (1912–2000), was born in Petah Tikva in the Ottoman Empire's Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, and his father, Warsaw-born Benzion Netanyahu (né Mileikowsky; 1910–2012), was a historian specializing in the Jewish Golden age of Spain.

[9] He and his brother Yonatan grew dissatisfied with what they saw as the superficial way of life they encountered in the area, including the prevalent youth counterculture movement and the liberal sensibilities of the Reform synagogue, Temple Judea of Philadelphia, that the family attended.

He took part in numerous cross-border raids during the 1967–70 War of Attrition, including the March 1968 Battle of Karameh, when the IDF attacked Jordan to capture PLO leader Yasser Arafat but were repulsed with heavy casualties,[11][12] rising to become a team-leader in the unit.

[39] Netanyahu hired American Republican political operative Arthur Finkelstein to run his campaign,[40] and although the American style of sound bites and sharp attacks elicited harsh criticism,[citation needed] Netanyahu won the 1996 election, becoming the youngest person in the history of the position and the first Israeli prime minister to be born in the State of Israel (Yitzhak Rabin was born in Jerusalem, under the British Mandate of Palestine, prior to the 1948 founding of the Israeli state).

[citation needed] In 1996, Netanyahu and Jerusalem's mayor Ehud Olmert decided to open an exit in the Arab Quarter for the Western Wall Tunnel, which prior prime minister Shimon Peres had instructed to be put on hold for the sake of peace.

Eventually, the lack of progress of the peace process led to new negotiations which produced the Wye River Memorandum in 1998 which detailed the steps to be taken by the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority to implement the earlier Interim Agreement of 1995.

"[64] On the same day that Hamas bombed the Ben Yehuda street in Jerusalem, Hezbollah executed a well-planned ambush on the IDF's naval specia forces Shayetet 13 in Ansariya, South Lebanon, killing 12 Israeli commandos.

He instituted a program to end welfare dependency by requiring people to apply for jobs or training, reduced the size of the public sector, froze government spending for three years, and capped the budget deficit at 1%.

A host of state assets worth billions of dollars were privatized, including banks, oil refineries, the El Al national airline, and Zim Integrated Shipping Services.

[92] Despite right wing parties winning a majority of 65 seats in the Knesset, Netanyahu preferred a broader centrist coalition and turned to his Kadima rivals, chaired by Tzipi Livni, to join his government.

[120][121] Waving the blueprints for Auschwitz and invoking the memory of his own family members murdered by the Nazis, Netanyahu delivered a passionate and public riposte to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's questioning of the Holocaust, asking: "Have you no shame?

[147] On 25 October 2012, Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that their respective political parties, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu, had merged and would run together on a single ballot in Israel's 22 January 2013 general elections.

[173][174][175][176] Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, stated that "American Jews are largely appalled by the notion that Netanyahu, or any other Israeli politician – one that we did not elect and do not choose to be represented by – claims to speak for us.

[186] In October 2015, Netanyahu drew widespread criticism for claiming that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, gave Adolf Hitler the idea for the Holocaust in the preceding months to the Second World War, convincing the Nazi leader to exterminate Jews rather than just expel them from Europe.

[192] Netanyahu later explained that his "aim was not to absolve Hitler from the responsibility he bears, but to show that the father of the Palestinian nation at the time, without a state and before the 'occupation', without the territories and with the settlements, even then aspired with systemic incitement for the destruction of the Jews.

"[193] Some of the strongest criticism came from Israeli academics: Yehuda Bauer said Netanyahu's claim was "completely idiotic",[191] while Moshe Zimmermann stated that "any attempt to deflect the burden from Hitler to others is a form of Holocaust denial.

"[194] In March 2016, Netanyahu's coalition faced a potential crisis as ultra-Orthodox members threatened to withdraw over the government's proposed steps to create non-Orthodox prayer space at the Western Wall.

Critics highlighted the negative effects it would have on the separation of powers,[249][250][251] the office of the Attorney General,[252][253][254] the economy,[255][256][257] public health,[258][259] women and minorities,[258][259][260] workers' rights,[261] scientific research,[259][262] the overall strength of Israel's democracy[263][264] and its foreign relations.

He stated that a complete stop to settlement building in the West Bank, as required by the 2003 road map for peace, was impossible and the expansions would be limited based on the "natural growth" of the population, including immigration, with no new territories taken.

[355] On 9 August 2009, speaking at the opening of a government meeting, Netanyahu repeated his claims from the Palestinians: "We want an agreement with two factors, the first of which is the recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people and (the second of which is) a security settlement".

"[356][361] Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said "Arab leaders should be more united and preserve the spirit of resistance to face the Israeli stands regarding the peace process and the Palestinian refugee issue."

"[387] Speaking before the UN General Assembly in New York on 24 September 2009, Netanyahu expressed a different opinion than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at the forum, saying those who believe Tehran is a threat only to Israel are wrong.

"[389] By 2012, Netanyahu is reported to have formed a close, confidential relationship with Defense Minister Ehud Barak as the two men considered possible Israeli military action against Iran's nuclear facilities,[390][391] following Israel's established Begin Doctrine.

"[395] Early in 2012, he used the opening ceremony for Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day to warn against the dangers of an Iranian nuclear bomb, saying he was following the example of Jewish leaders during World War II who struggled to raise the alarm about the Nazis' genocidal intentions.

"[408][409] In August 2013, Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Middle East and South Asia subcommittee, told the Miami Herald she raised the issue while leading a congressional delegation to Israel, stressing to Israeli officials the importance of them providing the Wultz family what they need for their lawsuit.

[410] U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, also spoke out on the issue with the Miami Herald: "In South Florida, we all know too well of the tragic circumstances surrounding the cowardly terrorist attack that took Daniel Wultz's innocent life.

[445] The resulting crisis in Israel–Poland relations was resolved in late June that year when the two prime ministers issued a joint communiqué endorsing research into the Jewish Holocaust and condemning the misnomer "Polish concentration camps".

[446] According to Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, during the visit of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Jerusalem, Netanyahu failed to publicly address Ukraine's official policy of rehabilitating local Nazi collaborators like UPA leader Roman Shukhevych, who had participated in the murder of Jews.

At the behest of the Netanyahu government, President-elect Trump attempted to intercede by publicly advocating for the resolution to be vetoed, as well as successfully persuading Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to temporarily withdraw it from consideration.

[480] Netanyahu's father, Benzion, was a professor of Jewish history at Cornell University,[481] editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, and a senior aide to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who remained active in research and writing into his nineties.