Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has embarked on an election campaign without having consolidated a clear strategy for victory. He didn't want the election to be held on March 23; he sought to postpone them. He knew exactly which mines he would need to neutralize in advance. While everyone else is preparing for Election Day, adorning their party lists with shiny new members and filming video clips for social media, Netanyahu is largely being dragged along for the ride. He still has an oversized presence on the Israeli stage, but conditions are far from ideal. The political agenda is confused. Health and finance? Israel is moving from a partial to a tightened lockdown in an effort to contend with the coronavirus outbreak and his legal matters are about to take the forefront. None of this makes for a winning campaign.
Netanyahu is waiting for everything to turn around – for the lockdown to end, for his trial to somehow be postponed, and for Israel to celebrate the incredible achievement of putting the pandemic behind it. The public has a very short memory. It will remember the bumps along the road, but the victory party - that press conference where Netanyahu declares the end of Israel's crisis - will render everything else trivial. Or so he hopes.
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A new, fifth, peace deal is also on the table. Following the accords with the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Bahrain, and Morocco, this will integrate well with one of Netanyahu's central campaign messages: Israel has an asset, a diplomatic asset. He is the one who brought Israel the vaccines. He is the one that brought them peace accords. Opting for another candidate for marginal issues would be an adventure the likes of which Israel doesn't need at this time. According to senior Likud officials, if everything goes smoothly, Netanyahu could end up with over 30 Knesset seats.
A preliminary analysis of the many changes the political system has undergone over the past few weeks has led Netanyahu to the following conclusions: The Likud-Haredi bloc, along with Yamina, will garner between 57 and 58 seats, a similar outcome to the results of the last three elections and close enough to the 60 needed to form a coalition government. Gideon Sa'ar's New Hope party, then, won't be taking votes from the Right but rather the Left.
Netanyahu can't drag the country into yet another round of elections if there is no clear winner this time around, for two reasons: If Blue and White head Benny Gantz makes it into the next Knesset, he will be prime minister come November, according to the rotation deal. And unlike the previous elections, this time around, the assessment is the anti-Netanyahu bloc, comprising everyone from Sa'ar to the Joint Arab List, will unite to remove Netanyahu from power once and for all. By any means necessary. Whether by forming a patchwork coalition or passing personalized legislation. But when the race gets really tight, we should look toward the minor parties. Sometimes, it's the little things that get you past the finish line.
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