Now everything is clear: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is interested in one issue dominating the election campaign. From his perspective, we can leave aside issues like security, policy, the economy and everything else, for that matter. Although he could take on his rivals on these issues, that is not what Netanyahu wants. He is only interested in discussing the investigations. All the time. From now until the polling stations open three months and one day from now.
Two weeks have passed since the dissolution of the Knesset, and so far all of the prime minister's remarks have focused on the investigations. He has tweeted about them, posted videos about them and even expropriated lengthy minutes of prime-time television broadcasts to discuss them. Every time the issue begins to fade from the headlines in the slightest, and the media begins to focus on something else, Netanyahu tweets or posts a new video and raises the subject once more.
Netanyahu doesn't care if he is later told that his claims weren't all that dramatic, or even if one news channel decided to cut live coverage of his speech short. Nor is he bothered by the fact that following his speech, stern commentators in the television studios berated him for the rest of the program. Attacks from the opposition don't bother him, either. In fact, there is nothing that enforces his narrative more than attacks on him from the Left. Hatnuah party leader Tzipi Livni, Labor party leader Avi Gabbay, Yesh Atid party chief Yair Lapid and Meretz party leader Tamar Zandberg provide the perfect backdrop for the one-man show Netanyahu is putting on for the 2019 elections.
The prime minister needs to reinvent himself ahead of the election. Unlike last time, when there was a tight race between Likud and a rival party, the Likud is now leading in the polls and safely headed toward victory, with all the other parties trailing far behind. Netanyahu understands that as long as this remains the case, he will find it difficult to impossible to repeat the claim – which four years ago proved more effective than anyone could have hoped – that the right-wing government is in danger and the Likud is in danger of losing precious Knesset seats to satellite parties in the homestretch.
So how does one integrate an almost certain election victory with claims of persecution and that the right's control of the government is at risk? You talk about the investigations and the investigations only and force everyone else to do the same.
Netanyahu cites the injustice of holding a hearing ahead of the elections, talk of persecution and a broken legal process that has barred the prime minister from confronting state witnesses as proof of the bias of the investigation. None of these claims aim to increase the number of seats the Likud ends up with in the Knesset but rather to help him form a coalition the day after. Once the entire election campaign has come to a close, with Netanyahu in effect having turned it into one great big referendum on the investigations, his incoming coalition partners will be hard-pressed to demand his resignation should an indictment be filed. Furthermore, one of the cornerstones of the next coalition, assuming Netanyahu is tasked with its formation, will be the understanding the government will continue to function as usual regardless of whether or not a final and conclusive indictment is filed. Netanyahu isn't waiting for the elections to wrap up to confirm that this will be the case. He is already making sure it will.
