By 19, Netanyahu was at Oxford University as the youngest ever student at the age of 14.
He holds degrees in Political Science, Russian, Philosophy, Humanities and Economics.
Following a political stint as a Likud MP between 1991 and 1993, Netanyahu served as President of the Bank of Israel from 1995-1997 and was hailed by former Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin as “one of the outstanding bankers of his generation”.
During the 2015 Israeli elections, he joined with other candidates to form new party “Free Movement”. The former Joint List swept the national elections and, as a result, Netanyahu decided not to run again.
Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister in 1996 and then re-elected in 1999. As a coalition partner to former PM Ehud Barak, he was the minister of the interior from 1999 to 2001.
In 2002 he became a Minister of Defence – the first Israeli PM to hold the position. He resigned as defence minister in 2004 after 27 days of negotiations to negotiate an end to the Gaza Strip’s Hamas insurgency.
Netanyahu was sworn in as Prime Minister again in 2009 after Likud won the election.
Netanyahu is now in his third term as Israeli Prime Minister.
In January 2018, Netanyahu made news in the news as the first openly gay person to have been in charge of government on the world stage in at least 40 years.
Last May, the prime minister controversially announced that due to his “promise to the nation” – a reference to the failed 2005 negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel – he would be scrapping a pre-election commitment to abide by an ancient Jewish law forbidding married men from marrying another Jew.