‘The spell has been broken’: Netanyahu the ‘wizard’ has lost his magic touch and Israel will forever be changed
Analysis: What next after he failed to sweep a majority in the elections, asks Bel Trew
No one was chanting “magician” when a hoarse Benjamin Netanyahu took to the stage of his half-empty elections headquarters at 3am on Wednesday.
There was no impassioned kiss with his wife Sara, no cascade of blue and white glitter, no indoor towering fireworks like the last time.
Instead, he stood at the podium alone to deliver a speech where he appeared to completely ignore reality by refusing to concede defeat in Tuesday’s unprecedented second elections.
His wife and leading members of his party (including those rumoured to be trying to take his throne) smiled woodenly.
Despite mounting one of the fiercest campaigns of his career, promising everything from annexing the entire West Bank to delaying the vote to launch a war with Gaza, the exit polls, and later partial results, showed a slim defeat to his archrival: the centrist Blue and White party.
Worse still, the polls showed his right-wing bloc fell significantly short of the 61 seats needed to form a ruling coalition.
Instead of the usual cries of “King Bibi” and “wizard”, a few hundred supporters chanted against the prospects of a unity government: an idea being pushed by his arch-rival Benny Gantz, the ex-army chief behind Blue and White, which would likely see Mr Netanyahu excluded.
Netanyahu’s troublesome ex-defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who scuppered his coalition-building attempt earlier this year, also threw his weight behind the unity idea.
“Israel needs a strong and Zionist government. There won’t, and cannot be, a government that relies on anti-Zionist Arab parties that deny the very existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” the prime minister said pulling out his one final card: fear of the left.
But it fell flat against the echoing walls and platters of uneaten sandwiches: the wizard of diplomacy and elections had finally run out of spells.
Dahlia Scheindlin, a prominent pollster who has worked on seven elections campaign, said that while the final results were still unknown, the “one thing that is certain: it is not a win for Netanyahu”.
“In his speech he doesn’t seem to realise the campaign over,” she continued.” He doesn’t seem to realise people voted already. He is not going to improve his bargaining position.”
Mr Netanyahu had sought a clear victory with his right-wing partners to secure immunity from three expected corruption trials.
The only way for him to form that right-wing immunity government would be to try to tempt Mr Lieberman, whose party Yisrael Beiteinu secured nine seats, to rejoin the fold.
But Scheindlin pointed out that would mean offering mind-boggling concessions given Mr Lieberman has already announced he would only back a unity government with Blue and White.
Otherwise, Mr Netanyahu would have to consent to an alliance with Blue and White who have said they would join forces with Likud but not if Netanyahu is in power.
The options for staying in power remain extremely limited.
And so Anshel Pfeffer, an expert on the prime minister, who wrote biography The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, said that for first time in a decade it appeared that there might be a new era post Netanyahu. If so it would spark a paradigm shift in Israeli politics.
Netanyahu is the longest-serving premier in Israel’s history, having been in office since 2009, surpassing in July even the country’s founding father Ben Gurion.
“The feeling that he can do whatever he wants, that he is a magician and all-powerful disappeared last night,” Pfeffer told The Independent.
“Israeli politics have been built around Netanyahu. The Likud will no longer be the same party. The whole Right will have to reinvent itself,” he said.
Even the centre and left would have to find a new identity after sculpting their position as one entirely determined by their opposition to Netanyahu, he continued.
“Israeli politics has been defined not by ideology but by how much parties love or hate Netanyahu.”
So what next if he is pushed from power?
The group most severely impacted by this change would be the Ultraorthodox, who have been the most loyal supporters of Mr Netanyahu.
He, in turn, has protected their interests including not approving changes to military draft regulations forcing Orthodox young men into conscription.
That will change if Mr Lieberman, who has called for a secular unity government, and Benny Gantz, a former army chief, is in power.
The other group who may be the most affected are the Arab and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The Arab Joint List, which is currently coming in third with 13 seats, would for the first time in history become the official opposition if the Likud and Blue and White, the two biggest parties, form a unity government.
“It will redefine Arab Israeli politics. As the official opposition they would have briefings with the prime minister, get a designated office, be given the right to respond,” Pfeffer explained.
“It would put them in the public eye in a way that Arab parties have never been before.”
For now, the scramble to build a coalition continues and Mr Netanyahu is not backing down.
But as Pfeffer concludes, one thing is for certain: “His spell has been broken.”
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