What Netanyahu’s ‘spectacular’ return means for Israel

Benjamin Netanyahu has sealed a “spectacular comeback”, said Sheldon Kirshner in The Times of Israel (Jerusalem). Israel’s fifth election in just over three years was widely viewed as a referendum on the “fitness to govern” of the country’s longest-serving PM; and the answer was clear.

Netanyahu, the leader of the Likud party, had lost his 12-year grip on power in 2021, when opposition parties joined together to forge a coalition to oust him.

But the agreement was always fragile, and collapsed in June. That led to last week’s elections, in which Netanyahu, who is on trial on criminal charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, “roared back to power”. Together with his allies, he won 64 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to defeat caretaker PM Yair Lapid and his “rainbow coalition of centrists, rightists and leftists”.

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It means Netanyahu and his allies – “a mixture of secular Jewish nationalists and Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox parties” – will be governing Israel within weeks. The gridlock that has been “paralysing” our politics in recent years has ended, with a decisive shift to the right.

One of the most right-wing governments in history

To the far-right, in fact, said Anshel Pfeffer in The Spectator. Netanyahu has ruthlessly courted political “fringe players” such as the homophobic Noam party, and the extremist Jewish Power. The latter is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a convicted racist who was for many years a “political untouchable”.

As a “young extremist firebrand”, he threatened the former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, shortly before his assassination by a Jewish extremist in 1995. He was an activist in an anti-Arab party that was outlawed as a terror group, and he still espouses hardline views. Yet Netanyahu accepted him as “a legitimate political partner”, helping catapult his party into the mainstream.

Now, Ben-Gvir wants to be put in charge of Israel’s police, as public security minister – yet just days ago, he was “brandishing his gun and urging Border Police officers to shoot at Arab stone-throwers”, said David Horovitz in The Times of Israel. And although Netanyahu has struck a moderate tone since the election, the “mainstreaming” of Ben-Gvir, and Netanyahu’s other new allies, means Israel is on track for one of the most right-wing governments in its history.

Liberals only themselves to blame

Well, that’s democracy, said The Jerusalem Post. There was “no hung jury”; Israelis were clear that they wanted Netanyahu to return “as the head of a very right-wing and religious government”. And you only have to look at the last government to see the importance of giving people what they voted for. That was led by Naftali Bennett, whose party won just seven seats in parliament, meaning he was dogged by questions of legitimacy throughout his short tenure; Likud has more than 30 seats. Ben-Gvir’s pitch of “restoring public security” clearly resonated with the public, said Melanie Phillips in Israel Hayom (Tel Aviv).

Fed up with an “establishment that appeared sluggish, incompetent and in thrall to liberal activist judges”, people voted for change. Liberals who are now “clutching their pearls” at the rise of the Right have only themselves to blame for creating the vacuum in which the likes of Ben-Gvir could thrive.

This election could have far-reaching consequences, said Neri Zilber in Foreign Policy (Washington). The Israeli Right has been vocal about its desire for “legal reforms” in recent months. These include steps that would “undermine” the supreme court, and would give the government a freer hand to build West Bank settlements, deport migrants and limit minority rights. “Not coincidentally”, such reforms could also halt the trial of Netanyahu, who maintains his innocence.

His alliance with the far-right risks doing serious harm to Israel’s standing in America, particularly when there’s a Democrat in the White House, said Eric H. Yoffie in Haaretz (Tel Aviv). It risks offending Israel’s liberal allies abroad, and emboldening its enemies. True, the numbers who backed far-right parties were pretty small. But “make no mistake”: if, as expected, Netanyahu gives those parties a role in his government, it will do serious damage to Israel’s standing on the world stage.