Benjamin Netanyahu closed the election campaign last night in his favorite hunting ground. A settlement, that of Revava in the West Bank, where he explained that it was Benny Gantz who held back new construction in the last year. Without the former adversary and then the government partner, he reiterated, everything will go back to speed, like the vaccination campaign, the flagship of his fifth term of government. Today the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history is hunting for the sixth. The general, who had challenged and nearly beaten him in the three previous early elections, is a shadow of himself. The pact of government has turned into a death trap, a vice that first shattered his party, Kahol Lavan, and then reduced it to a flicker. If the polls are true, Gantz will end up with five seats instead of the 33 he won in the last round. He is no longer the opponent of “King Bibi”. Likud is given to 30 seats and the first challenger is the formation of centrist Yair Lapid, Yesh Adith, at 19, while Tikva Hadasha, New Hope, of former party mate Gideon Moshe Saar, should stop at 9.
The prospect of a center-left government is more uncertain than ever, also because it should pass through an alliance with the fractured Arab parties. According to polls, 51% of Israelis do not want Benjamin Netanyahu to remain as prime minister, but only 21% would like a government with ultra-Orthodox parties. Netanyahu feels victory within reach, with a center-right majority, but shifted to the right as never before in the history of the Jewish state. In addition to Likud, there would be the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox Torah United party, the Sephardic Shas party, the new hypernationalist religious Zionism party, and the nationalist right-wing Yamina led by Naftali Bennett. Religious Zionism, born from the merger between the National Union and the extremist Otzma Yehidit, has an extreme program of annexations throughout the West Bank, and even proposes to expel “disloyal Arabs” from the Jewish state. Unattainable resolutions which, however, mobilize a decisive fringe of the electorate. The coalition oscillates between 58 and 63 seats, 61 are enough to have a majority in the Knesset. With a bribery trial on his neck, 25-year attrition on the crest of the wave, Netanyahu is ready to perform the miracle.
The recipe is simple this time, the fastest vaccination campaign in the world, with 52 percent of Israelis already receiving the double dose. The premier overturned the hesitations at the beginning of the pandemic and now has a score that is the envy of all EU countries. The third wave is averted. The infamous “Rt” dropped to 0.6, despite openings and unbridled celebrations for Purim. The prime minister’s major blow was to convince Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, a Jew from Thessaloniki who immigrated to the United States at the age of 34, to immediately supply him, under any conditions, with 10 million doses of his vaccine. Netanyahu, between November and December made him “over thirty phone calls, almost every day”. A winning pressing, against the virus and political opponents.