Benjamin Netanyahu, the biggest loser in last week’s preliminary deal to halt the US-Israel-Iran war, will be remembered – and reviled – as the man who put the Middle East to the sword. Whether the “problem” was Hamas in Gaza, illegal West Bank land seizures, supposed Israeli-Arab fifth columnists, peace campaigners’ aid flotillas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, hostile militias in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, or Tehran’s hardline Islamic regime, the Israeli leader’s “solution” was always the same: extreme, often lawless violence that invariably made matters worse.

The unprovoked, illegal war against Iran was the ultimate expression of the Netanyahu doctrine – the disproportionate application of brute force. Predictably, it too, has failed. Donald Trump is desperately arguing that the ceasefire memorandum he signed in Versailles (of all places!) is not the lame capitulation it so self-evidently is. But while the US president may survive this humiliation – despite global scepticism and mockery – the likely consequences of the debacle for Netanyahu, his brother-in-harms, are career-ending serious. In many respects, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is already yesterday’s man.

The consensus began to fall apart in 2015 when Netanyahu and pro-Israel organisations in the US mounted a huge campaign to derail Barack Obama’s attempt at a rapprochement with Iran. “The Israel-advocacy complex’s blitz failed to stop the nuclear deal. Instead, it demolished its own vestigial facade of bipartisanship. Pro-Israel groups soon began to function openly as a wing of the Republican party,” wrote Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer. Trump’s first term deepened the political polarisation. He ghosted the Palestine Liberation Organization, moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. “Trump has arguably done more to push rank-and-file Democrats away from Israel than any pro-Palestinian activist,” Leifer noted.

Netanyahu’s subsequent actions – his calculated embrace of hard-right nationalist-populist politics, support for unchecked territorial expansion and settler land-grabs, and his failed wars in Gaza, Lebanon and now Iran – have further fractured the old consensus. Recent polls indicate a startling turnaround. For the first time, more Americans sympathise with Palestinians than with Israelis. Many question whether the alliance serves US interests and want to halt or limit military aid. Ironically, present-day criticism, like past applause, is bipartisan, coming from both leftwing progressives and Maga supporters.