In these last days of the campaign, Benyamin Netanyahu skims every evening the public gardens, the halls of the festivals and the shopping streets of the small towns of Israel. Escorted by a slew of bodyguards, he gives a brief speech on the megaphone and goes on to the next stage.
This Tuesday evening, a week before the election, 2,000 people waited for him for nearly two hours in a park in Nahariya, near the Lebanese border. Mainly Israelis of Sephardic origin, from the middle classes: the electoral base of “Bibi, king of Israel”. A Nahariya-born shopkeeper, Idit, in her forties, has always voted for Netanyahu. “No other leader comes close to him, he absolutely has to come back,” she implores.
At just 73 years old, the veteran of Israeli politics is probably leading his last fight. With a determination and a vitality that leave you speechless. “He’s a beast of the countryside, raves Nadav Shtrauchler, his former director of communications. He enjoys incredible physical shape and perfectly masters today’s media codes. When he was sent back to the opposition, his opponents thought they had gotten rid of him. And here he is coming back with a bang.”
A political survivor seeking revenge
Removed from power in June 2021 by a coalition of eight political parties, Netanyahu wants his revenge. Yair Lapid, the current Prime Minister? An incompetent who “sells the country to the Arabs”. Naftali Benett, the man who stole his job? An ambitious without depth, sent back to his start-ups. Netanyahu’s twelve consecutive years at the head of the country have anchored in him an unshakeable conviction: he alone is capable of presiding over the destinies of Israel. The polls seem to back him up. The Likud list is well ahead of the voting intentions with around thirty seats in the Knesset (out of 120). His autobiography has just been published and is already among the bestsellers of the year.
Convinced of returning to power next month, Benyamin Netanyahu is already sketching out the main lines of his action. He promises to repress the nascent Palestinian uprising in the northern West Bank with an iron fist and to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. On Ukraine, he has just made a spectacular about-face: architect of the rapprochement with Vladimir Putin in the 2010s, he is now considering the delivery of arms to kyiv. A position that breaks with the caution adopted by the Israeli government since the start of hostilities. “We should not expect radical changes in the short term, tempers Nadav Shtrauchler. Israel has too much to lose by breaking the alliance with Russia, in particular because of military coordination in Syria. But it will probably act in the shadow, with tact, as he always did.”
An extremely close election
Despite his undeniable popularity, Netanyahu’s return to power remains uncertain. To obtain a majority in the Knesset, he must count on the support of the orthodox parties and the extreme right of the sulphurous Itamar Ben Gvir. However, such a coalition would barely obtain the minimum majority of 61 deputies. A margin all the more slim since an Orthodox party has already indicated that it does not rule out letting go of Netanyahu to sell itself to the highest bidder.
“If Netanyahu falls below thirty seats, the centrist Benny Gantz could try to found a coalition of national unity with the left and the orthodox parties”, analyzes the academic Philippe Velilla. This option would be the preference of the President of the State, Isaac Herzog, responsible for appointing the best placed to form a coalition the day after the elections.
Benyamin Netanyahu would probably not recover from another failure. His stubbornness to stay in power has plunged the country into unprecedented political instability, with five early elections in four years. In Likud, the new generation is already preparing its weapons in the event of a struggle for its succession. But Bibi has no doubts. In a video posted on TikTok last week, we see him struggling to pass thread through the eye of a needle. He eventually succeeds and proudly declares facing the camera: “I never give up, there is no such thing as despair.”