WhatsappBeyond the noise and character assassination, the election results show the enduring strength of Netanyahu’s strategy and persona at the center of Israel’s political battle.
The common sense of a functioning democracy lies in allowing the public’s choice to establish what, until that moment, had been submerged beneath all the chatter.
In Israel, the election results could only come into sync with reality. Perhaps whether one expected them depends on the fact that here, reality delivers a slap in the face every day. You are forced to take it into account.
The change bloc did everything it could to destroy Benjamin Netanyahu. In Italy, something similar happened to Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media mogul who served four times as Italian prime minister: character assassination.
It was carried out with passion and skill. At dawn on Election Day, outside polling stations, pleasant young activists reminiscent of Hashomer Hatzair, the socialist Zionist youth movement founded more than a century ago, would approach you in pairs and explain why Netanyahu simply had to go home.
For months, the relentless hammering spared no aspect of the prime minister: his responsibility for Oct. 7, the hostages, his trial, his family.
And yet, with 85% of the ballots counted, the Likud-led bloc stood at 53 seats, while Gadi Eisenkot’s camp had 48. The two sides are not so far apart, but Bibi is stronger.
He does not have a majority. But his 19 years as prime minister have survived the condemnation that has become a kind of populist language, spreading abroad into the daily antisemitic litany: “Oh, I’m not against Israel, but Netanyahu … ”
Against that stands his record.
He held firm in creating a successful defense strategy, fighting “tooth and nail” for a small, besieged people. He stabilized and grew the economy and helped turn Israel into the Start-Up Nation. He dared to attack Iran and fought on seven fronts. And on the day after Oct. 7, he kept on its feet a country shattered by an unimaginable surprise and an indescribable, largely misunderstood grief.
He looked the accusations of colonialism and genocide in the eye and rejected them with contempt.
After Oct. 7, Netanyahu opened the door to a coalition government with Gadi Eisenkot and Benny Gantz, both former IDF chiefs of staff who subsequently joined his emergency wartime government. Does anyone remember?
President Isaac Herzog certainly does. And now it falls to him to try to prevent yet another election.
For the moment, both sides are proclaiming victory. But the left must immediately answer a fundamental question. With the two Arab parties holding an extraordinary 19 seats, will it keep its promise not to form a government dependent on parties whose supporters sing “Baladi Baladi” (“My Country, My Country”), a Palestinian nationalist song, and whose representatives refuse to define Hamas as a terrorist organization?
We are still too close to Oct. 7.
It is difficult to imagine Eisenkot, whose son Gal, 25, was killed in Jabalia on Dec. 7, 2023, entering such a controversial alliance. Other leaders of the left face similar problems. Israel is a small country, and the war has touched almost everyone.
Nor can any of them ignore the fact that the war is still here, that Iran has not abandoned its nuclear ambitions and that Netanyahu remains an important guardian of Israel’s national security.
U.S. President Donald Trump has supported him in the name of the alliance through which Israel and the United States can confront the Iranian regime. Like Herzog, Trump would surely see the advantages of a substantive coalition government capable of pursuing their shared strategic goals.
Netanyahu, too, may want his hands free for the next two years to finish the job. A rotation government could offer him precisely that.
At this moment, both Israeli camps are declaring complete victory, but both know that this is not what happened.
The choices are stark.
Either the left abandons its “never Bibi” mantra and its reliance on the Arab parties, while Netanyahu perhaps offers a coalition without Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the right-wing Otzma Yehudit Party and a longtime Netanyahu coalition partner, or Israel risks heading once again to an early election.
The public, nearly 80% of whom went out to vote, would have difficulty understanding such an outcome.
Bibi should give Eisenkot his phone number.
He needs a rotation of at least two years to finish the job with Iran and Hamas. After that, we shall see.
For now, Netanyahu can breathe. He can enjoy the confirmation, the recognition.
Perhaps even the world will now begin to understand who Bibi is?
