It's a victory, but based on the exit poll results, it's still not a coalition. If the right-wing bloc can reach 61 seats, the mission will be to form a coalition as quickly as possible. There's no reason that shouldn't happen within a week. The people of Israel need to see a new government that has the Knesset's trust, and soon – we need to create momentum of decisiveness after a clear win.
If the right-wing bloc stays at 59-60 seats, the project of building a coalition becomes more complicated, and will certainly be much harder. Over the past year, there have been vows and oaths and boycotts as a result of the legal system's interference with the political system. There is no doubt that this is a personal and political victory for Benjamin Netanyahu, a bigger one than April 2019.
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Again, we are talking about most of the public voting against the legal battle that the system has waged against the prime minister. Indictments for things most of the public doesn't even see as crimes, and big words like "bribery" and "breach of trust" are viewed as not having facts to back them up. If the alleged crimes shocked the public, Netanyahu would have been out long ago.
In a scenario in which the right-wing bloc reaches 61 seats, without lone MKs defecting and without negotiating with Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman, we will see a government similar to the second Begin government of 1981. That was a straight right-wing government that made decisions that had far-reaching political and diplomatic implications. Netanyahu can't retreat from the issue of applying sovereignty to parts of the Land of Israel that lie outside the 1967 borders, particularly the Jordan Valley. In the days prior to the election, a recent interview with Joint Arab List leader Ayman Odeh came out in which Odeh told the interviewer that bringing down Netanyahu was a "national goal." He didn't mean a national goal for Israel, but rather a goal for the Palestinians.
Lieberman should realize that the national side in Israel also has a goal, and that is not to defeat the haredim or Yamina. The goal is to bring the Israeli part of US President Trump's "little" deal to fruition and apply sovereignty. But no less important, we need a government that will decide on a state budget and an economic plan to get out ahead of the nascent global economic crisis. It's almost certain that economic concerns as well as influential public figures prompted the voters to bolster Netanyahu this time around.
This was, no doubt, an expression of the public's faith in the prime minister. The Israeli public prefers Netanyahu even with the three indictments various players have managed to stick him with. The public accepts the prime minister's judgment even in the midst of political chaos.
