Bibi's back: what will Netanyahu do next?

"Every Houdini eventually comes across a lock they can't pick," Yossi Mekelberg, from the Chatham House think tank, told Al Jazeera.

Benjamin Netanyahu has dominated Israeli politics for nearly three decades and is again riding high after a series of stunning military victories. The question everyone is asking now is: what will his next move be and how long can the ultimate political escape artist survive?

What did the commentators say?

In Israel, the "emerging narrative is that the end result of the conflict with Iran has solidified" Netanyahu's position, said Al Jazeera.

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Only two weeks ago, he was in "real trouble". Public opinion had turned against Israel's war in Gaza and the night before he ordered strikes on Iran his ruling coalition government just survived a confidence vote.

"Now, he can argue that he has severely weakened Israel's most dangerous regional enemy, Iran," and destroyed its nuclear programme, which he has for decades claimed posed an existential threat to his country.

Netanyahu "sees his destiny at this moment", said Ami Dror, one of his former bodyguards, in The New Statesman. "He believes he has been ordained to save the country", to "protect Israel from the eternal hatred" and "to prevent the Holocaust my father survived from happening again".

"Much will depend on Trump, the unpredictable, self-declared most pro-Israel US president in history", said the Financial Times.

In what Axios called an "unprecedented intervention" this week, Donald Trump called for Netanyahu to be pardoned over ongoing corruption charges and his long-running trial to be immediately cancelled.

But Trump has been far more hesitant to intervene when it comes to Gaza. An "early test" of Netanyahu's vision for the Middle East "could come soon", said the FT. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani is hoping for an imminent resumption of talks about a Gaza ceasefire.

"Arab and Western leaders have for decades said that resolving the protracted Palestinian-Israel conflict is key to neutering extremist forces" and stabilising the region. But Netanyahu has "repeatedly rebuffed Western pressure to make any concessions to the Palestinians, let alone take steps towards the establishment of a Palestinian state".

What next?

With Hamas all but wiped out, Hezbollah greatly diminished, Syria's Assad regime toppled and Iran's nuclear threat neutralised – for now at least – Netanyahu is in a strong position. So the time may be right to "announce an end to the war in Gaza and bring the remaining 50 hostages home; to make the most of the 'Bibi bounce' and seek to renew his mandate with fresh elections", said The Telegraph.

Recent polling showed that a vast majority of Israelis supported the strikes on Iran, and Netanyahu has seen his own popularity rise in recent weeks. Not surprisingly, there are reports that his closest advisers are weighing up calling a snap election.

"Netanyahu is stronger than ever," Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and former political aide to Netanyahu, told Al Jazeera. "No one's going to bring him down, no one's going to challenge him, not his opponents, not his detractors, nobody."

But Israel's – and Netanyahu's – moment of ultimate victory carries with it its own dangers, said Uzi Arad, a former national security adviser to the PM. "Some already are practising hubris – I can already detect it," the Mossad veteran told the FT. "We all have weaknesses, and this is a complicated country."

The same could be said of its leader.