A divisive force of nature who commandeered the airwaves, took over the vegetable markets, monopolized social media and even called potential voters out of the sea at Netanya beach on election day, Netanyahu simply refused to be beaten.

He didn’t always play fair. His “vote Likud, only Likud” gevalt mantra of the campaign’s final days siphoned votes away from his ostensible right-wing partners. His Likud party’s hiring of activists to deploy hidden cameras in Arab polling stations Tuesday will require further investigation, as will the impact that tactic had on turnout in the Arab sector. The effort to depict his key rival Benny Gantz as mentally unstable was truly a low.

He proved spectacularly adept in turning the potential major embarrassment of an ostensible exposé of illicit twitter campaigning into a victory over his accusers, even at the price of bringing the homophobic extremist “Captain George” into the Prime Minister’s Residence.

He also used reprehensible means toward the single end of winning by brokering the construction of the Union of Right-Wing Parties, with the inclusion of the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit, when seeking to prevent the loss of vital right-wing votes (even as he was happy to try to consign Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked’s New Right to political oblivion).

And as he now prepares to try to build a majority coalition, there is widespread suspicion that he will tacitly condition his recent promise of West Bank settlement annexation and key roles for his potential right-wing partners on their readiness to support legislation that would protect him from his looming indictment for fraud, breach of trust and, in one case, bribery.

Netanyahu has denied this with greater and lesser conviction in recent days. Some potential partners, such as Kulanu’s Moshe Kahlon, have said they would never support the immunity move; others, such as URWP’s would-be education minister Bezalel Smotrich, have said they will champion it.

But at the end of it all — at the end of a bitter campaign in which he denigrated those three ex-chiefs of staff as “weak leftists,” and battered the media and the cops and the state prosecutors for leading an ostensible witch-hunt against him over his alleged corruption — Netanyahu overnight Tuesday-Wednesday was emerging victorious again, heading for his fifth term in office.

It wasn’t all his doing. He benefited from Israelis’ gradual shift to the right: In 1999, he was defeated by another ex-IDF chief and political newcomer, Ehud Barak, in part because a goodly proportion of the electorate believed that he was missing opportunities for peace. That was not the case this time. Not in an Israel still traumatized by the Second Intifada. Not in an Israel reminded intermittently by Hezbollah’s tunnels, rockets and threats, and by Hamas rocket attacks, of the dangers of relinquishing adjacent territory.

Ultimately, even that unprecedented cavalcade of military men could not persuade enough Israelis to trust anyone but Netanyahu at the helm.

Both Gantz and Netanyahu made victory speeches in the first few hours after the polling stations closed late Tuesday night. But Gantz’s was premature. Netanyahu bided his time, and had the final word.

In that address, with victory about to be formalized, he could afford to sound magnanimous for the first time in the election campaign — to promise that while he would work to build a right-wing government, he would be the prime minister of all Israelis, right and left, Jewish and non-Jewish.

Just hours earlier, and for weeks and months before that, his tone had been so very different. But now he was King Bibi, about to be recrowned.

Whether Israel annexes the West Bank could be up to Trump, not Netanyahu

U.S. presidents have often tried to restrain Israeli leaders. That may not be the case anymore.

By Shalom Lipner

Washington Post, April 9

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses supporters at the Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem on Monday, the day before Israeli elections. (Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images)

Israelis are going to the polls on Tuesday. Fateful decisions await members of the incoming Knesset, but for now most Israelis are overcome with relief that an ugly and gruelling election campaign is coming finally to a close.

The incumbent prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his primary challenger, former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Benny Gantz, have pummeled each other incessantly in a race that has seemed devoid of substantive debate. More attention has been devoted to matters of personal integrity and competence than to Israel’s security or economic condition.

But the frame shifted again on Saturday night, when Netanyahu declared that, if re-elected, he would pursue annexation in the West Bank.

What happens next if Netanyahu retains power will depend to no small degree on President Trump.

For Netanyahu — Israel’s premier over the entire past decade — the strategy to victory this year couldn’t have been clearer: contrasting his record of achievement to the relative inexperience of his competitors and promising his supporters to deliver more rewards in the future. U.S. recognition of Israeli dominion on the Golan Heights, the announcement that Brazil will be opening a trade office in Jerusalem, and Russia’s retrieval of the body of an Israeli serviceman missing for 37 years — all within the past two weeks — underscored Netanyahu’s status as Israel’s pre-eminent statesman.

His pledge to make Israel’s rule over the West Bank official and permanent comes now as a complement to lay the foundations for his encore in power.

Annexation is the holy grail for large segments of the Israeli right — Netanyahu’s preferred coalition partners — with over 40 percent of all Israelis actually favoring a full or partial incorporation of the West Bank into Israel. Dangling the prospect of such a move, which the prime minister began doing after his visit to the White House in March, is a quintessential act of pandering to his base.

But it’s not clear that Netanyahu actually wants to go through with it.

Netanyahu is perceived widely as a creature of the far right, bent on furthering the agenda of Israel’s settlement movement. His rhetoric sustains that impression unquestionably, but the reality is more complex. In fact, Netanyahu has proved consistently — and counterintuitively — to be a risk-averse proponent of the status quo.

The more hawkish flank of Netanyahu’s ideological camp has criticized him bitterly for implementing what they see as the policies of his left-wing opponents. He’s come under fire for decisions like approving the transfer of funds to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, delaying the court-ordered demolition of a controversial Bedouin encampment and not charging ahead with Israeli construction in strategic areas of the West Bank.

Netanyahu’s right-wing frenemies are consumed with fear that he could even “capitulate” to Trump, embracing an as-yet-unreleased peace blueprint that would entail concessions that they find unacceptable.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has demonstrated marked restraint in responding to rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel’s heartland — much to the chagrin of the majority of Israelis who believe that the IDF should have responded more rigorously. He’s also exercised caution in managing the country’s expanding relationships within the Arab world, moving forward at a measured pace; resisting the impulse to upgrade ties, Netanyahu has avoided taking the assumed prerequisite step to bringing this largely clandestine cooperation into the daylight — i.e., opening the Pandora’s box of negotiations with the Palestinians — and given priority to keeping his government intact.

That’s why the U.S. role is pivotal to what happens next. As a robust democracy, Israel has no lack of independent agency. But when it comes to major changes in policy, Israeli leaders have always checked to see which way the winds were blowing in Washington.

In 2003, when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began contemplating seriously the idea of disengaging Israel from the Gaza Strip, it was the United States to which he turned for feedback. Revealing his initial thoughts to Elliott Abrams, then special assistant to President George W. Bush, during a below-the-radar meeting in Rome, Sharon laid the groundwork for an eventual exchange of letters in which the president deemed it “unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” America’s commitments provided Sharon the cover he required to proceed with his bold plans.

Today, the United States stands once again as the enabler — or not — of Israel’s territorial designs.

The roots of today’s annexation discourse extend far back beyond the advent of the Trump presidency: Security and religious arguments advocating for Israel’s retention of all or parts of biblical Judea and Samaria date to the immediate aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the territory in question.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump show off the US declaration of recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights on March 25 (Photo: EPA). 

But Trump’s proclamation that “the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel” makes Netanyahu’s commitment Saturday seem like something he might credibly follow through on if he wins on Tuesday. Having already bestowed his blessing on Israel’s jurisdiction over Jerusalem and the Golan, Trump now gives Israelis genuine cause to believe that the West Bank may be in play as never before.

Netanyahu’s latest statements notwithstanding, he has been unenthusiastic about the idea of annexing the West Bank until now, manoeuvring instead to keep ahead of the political curve. Last year, the White House disclosed that Netanyahu — contrary to what he told a meeting of his Likud Party caucus — had not even bothered to raise such an initiative with the Trump administration. Presumably, Netanyahu realizes the level of international censure and explosive ramifications for Israel that would almost certainly follow in the wake of annexation.

In the 11th hour of a tough fight to stay in office, Netanyahu offered up annexation — something he’s refrained from executing in four previous terms as prime minister — in the hope of energizing right-wing Israelis to back his candidacy. That doesn’t mean it’s a done deal. Reluctant to pay the price of disappointing his domestic political allies, Netanyahu will be dependent on the broad shoulders of the United States as his last line of defence, looking to invoke American displeasure as the reason he can’t deliver on his promise.

The onus, by default, will thus fall on Trump.

If the president comes out forcefully against annexation, Netanyahu can report unhesitatingly to Israelis that his hands are tied. But if Trump appears to consent to Israel annexing the West Bank — a break with decades of U.S. policy — that would force Netanyahu to choose between feeding his coalition’s appetite or risking the survival of his government. (Facing potential indictment, he’ll probably be predisposed toward the former.)

Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition this past weekend, Trump said that he “would love to see peace in the Middle East.” That might be something he wants to consider deeply before weighing in on Israel’s brewing annexation debate.

Shalom Lipner is a nonresident senior fellow for Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council. From 1990 to 2016, he served seven consecutive premiers at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem.