Netanyahu’s re-election will push Israel towards an even more extreme phase of polarisation

Without a noisy left or a strong representation of Arab parties in parliament, the Israeli prime minister is better positioned to pave the way to fulfil his most controversial pre-election promises

To Bibi or not to Bibi – that was the joke floating around social media last week.

The knife-edge elections, which took place on Tuesday, were more of a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu’s 10-year right-wing rule than anything else.

The Israeli prime minister was chasing the record of being longest-serving premier in Israeli history, but along the way was also hurtling towards the more inglorious title of being Israel’s first serving PM to be indicted.

Despite the threat of a graft trial hanging above his head, and the swirling allegations of yet more corruption in the form of dodgy submarine sales, the final election results show he secured his greatest ever victory in terms of seat numbers. His right-wing Likud party swept 36 of the 120-seat Knesset, the highest number Likud has won under Bibi.

On the night of the vote, supporters at the Likud headquarters, draped in Israeli flags and wielding banners that read “Trump”, chanted “magician” at their leader. Flanked by towers of fireworks and bedecked with glittering confetti, Netanyahu passionately embraced his wife and declared that night to be “a tremendous victory”.

The slight hitch was that about 500 metres away, Benny Gantz, Israel’s popular ex-army chief, had just delivered a similarly stirring acceptance speech but with (literally) less fireworks.

Initial exit polls showed Gantz’s Blue and White, an alliance of three ex-generals and centrist opposition leader Yair Laid, had just nudged past Likud in seat numbers.

In the end Blue and White won 35 seats to Likud’s 36. And they conceded defeat.

But despite this, Netanyahu’s win was not the resounding victory he proclaimed it was.

Blue and White performed surprisingly well. It is a feat that a political newcomer – Gantz – with an unknown hodgepodge party that was vaguely centre-right on some issues, had managed to win so many seats.

Their success was not so much grounded in their political prowess, but their position as the only viable alternative to Netanyahu.

It is an indication of how bitterly divided Israel is – a tricky inheritance that Netanyahu and Likud will have to navigate.

And that worrying polarisation will only widen in the coming months when Netanyahu faces a pre-trial hearing, after which the attorney general will decide whether to send him to trial. According to Israeli analysts – and media – the top prosecutor is very likely to push ahead with an indictment in three corruption cases.

Although there is nothing in Israeli law that stops a prime minister serving while standing trial, will Bibi’s coalition partners stick with him through that? If not, would that trigger fresh elections?

These elections also brought to the surface some other worrying indicators about the future of the country and the region.

The success of the Blue and White alliance was in part due to it pilfering votes from the left, which has all but collapsed in Israel.

All in all, the left really only secured 10 seats: Labor, the successor to the party of Israel’s founding father David Ben Gurion, won just six.

The Arab-dominated parties also suffered – losing three seats in total – after an election alliance formed in 2015 split in two amid one of the lowest Arab turnouts in years.

Many Arab boycotters cited a controversial Nation State Law, which Netanyahu’s government pushed through last year and defines national self-determination as “the unique right of the Jewish people”.

Netanyahu is likely to build his most right-wing government yet, and will be under pressure to pander to coalition partners’ demands, to keep them on board amid the impending threat of indictment.

Without a noisy left or a strong representation of Arab parties in parliament you could argue that would pave the way for him to fulfil his most controversial pre-election promises, such as the unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank, which is a demand of the right but illegal under international law.

That obviously does not bode well for the prospect of peace with the Palestinians. Particularly since there is a little hope among Palestinians in the “deal of the century” peace plan US president Donald Trump is expected to deliver in the coming months.

In the lead-up to the elections, Trump controversially recognised Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967. It boosted Bibi’s popularity but sparked fears similar actions could be taken over the West Bank.

Trump had already moved the US embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognising the contested city as Israel’s capital, and slashed aid to the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency.

His last pre-election gift (or at least it was framed that way by Netanyahu in a tweet in Hebrew) was designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation. Just hours before polling stations opened, Netanyahu said Trump was “answering” a request he had made. Although not directly related to Israel/Palestine, it’s indication of their shared plan for the region and alignment of interests.

Given all of this, how little would Trump object to, say, the whole or partial annexation of the West Bank?

Whatever happens, Israel is entering a new phase of polarisation, with a leader who has been at the country’s helm for the longest in its history and who will likely be distracted by a complex corruption trial against him.

All while a fraught peace process is supposed to be under way.

2019 will be a watershed year.