Netanyahu won the election by cannibalising the vote to likud's Right, but this required him to say some things loud that he had conveyed to his hard-Right admirers
Midway through the election campaign, Israel's leading satirical TV show, Eretz Nehederet, came up with a new take on the man who has dominated the country's politics for the past 20 years. Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, it suggested, was cursed as a child to be Israel's Prime Minister for eternity. His only chance to break the spell was to become its worst-ever leader.
Well, if that was his strategy, he has failed again. Despite having run a Government that delivered too few jobs, stagnant wages, a rapidly rising cost of living, and a full-blown housing crisis — it now costs the average Israeli 148 months' salary to buy a home, compared to 66 months for the average American — Israelis voted him back into power in Tuesday's election.
Only a week ago, he was running behind in the polls, but a massive last-minute scare campaign turned it around. On the polling day, Mr Netanyahu even put a video clip on his Facebook page in which he warned that “the rule of the right is in danger. The (Israeli) Arabs are moving in droves to the polling stations. left-wing organisations are bringing them there in buses.” And who was paying for those busesIJ “American money,” explained Bibi's campaign team.
Bibi is back for up to five more years, which would make him the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israeli history. But turning the tide had a price, and Israel has not yet begun to pay it. Mr Netanyahu won mainly by cannibalising the vote of the parties to likud's Right, but that strategy required him to say some things out loud that he had previously conveyed to his hard-Right admirers only by nods and winks. The most dramatic shift came just one day before the election, when he finally said plainly that he would never allow the creation of a Palestinian state.
“I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate (Israeli-occupied Palestinian) territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel”, he said. Does that mean that a Palestinian state would not be permitted if he were re-elected, asked the interviewer. “Indeed”, Mr Netanyahu replied.
This will come as a vast surprise to practically nobody. Mr Netanyahu's entire political career has been dedicated to sabotaging the 1993 Oslo Accords (which envisaged Israeli and Palestinian states living side-by-side in peace) and planting so many Jewish settlers on the Israeli-occupied territories that a separate Palestinian state becomes physically impossible.
He largely destroyed the Oslo Agreement in his first term as Prime Minister in 1996-99 (the creation of a Palestinian state was scheduled for 1998). Almost 10 per cent of Israel's Jews now live in the occupied Palestinian territories (east Jerusalem and the West Bank) that would make up a Palestinian state. But to keep his American allies and his European supporters happy, he never actually said he would not allow an independent Palestine.
Mr Netanyahu finally spoke the truth on Monday because that's what the settlers and their supporters wanted to hear, and he needed those votes in order to survive politically. But it destroyed the myth, useful to the United States and the European Union, that there is some surviving ‘peace process’ that must be protected by keeping the Israelis happy. The ‘peace process’ is dead, dead, dead. Has been for years. There is no “two-state solution” on the table.
He still truly believes that only he understands the real and existential dangers facing Israel, and has the will to do something about them. Except that all he ever really does is kick those dangers down the road a bit. Unable to believe that a peaceful settlement is possible or even desirable, he condemns his country to perpetual conflict and growing isolation.