Netanyahu’s Pyrrhic victory

TEL AVIV — Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud-led bloc of Jewish supremacists, messianic nationalists, and ultra-Orthodox theocrats has won Israel’s general election after suffering four consecutive defeats in less than four years. None of these elections was about ideology or policies, but rather about Netanyahu’s own fitness to serve as prime minister. Netanyahu succeeded this time for two reasons.

One reason is that anti-Arab sentiment is a stronger tool than ever for mobilizing voters.

This popular animus has been growing in recent years, despite Arabs’ steady integration into Israeli professional classes and the rise of an Arab middle class eager to share in Israel’s revolution of opportunities. Nearly 50 percent of ultra-Orthodox and religious Israeli youth, and 23 percent of secular youth, support stripping Israeli Arabs of their citizenship.

But the unprecedented inclusion of an Arab Islamist party in the broad government coalition that blocked Netanyahu’s bid for power after the March 2021 election was a gift to the opposition. Netanyahu and his theo-fascist allies turned it into a highly effective electoral weapon.

For example, Netanyahu portrayed the budgets that Ra’am (the United Arab List), under the leadership of Mansour Abbas, received for its deprived constituency as “subsidies to Moslem Brotherhood terrorists.” Of course, these were the same “terrorists” that Netanyahu himself had cynically courted with lavish financial incentives when he unsuccessfully tried to form a government after the March 2021 election.

The second reason, familiar from the rise of fascism in Europe, is that the political center and the left were preoccupied with petty squabbles and divisive rivalries. The most extremist coalition in Israel’s history was brought to power by a popular-vote margin of no more than 3,000.

But the failure of the dwindling Zionist left — the Labor Party and Meretz — to unite in a common slate left the latter 0.1 percent short of the 3.25 percent threshold to enter the Knesset (parliament). A similarly unpardonable mishap was the split within the Joint List — the Arab nationalist alignment opposed to Ra’am’s pragmatism — which cost one of its main components Knesset representation.

Similarly, while Netanyahu commanded a cohesive bloc that followed his commands and electoral strategy, Yair Lapid, the head of the centrist Yesh Atid, the biggest party in the anti-Netanyahu bloc, had his leadership constantly questioned and contested by his colleagues. Defense Minister Benny Gantz even campaigned for the premiership himself. Lapid was an effective interim prime minister, but an utterly inadequate contender against a masterful, unscrupulous politician like Netanyahu.

But there was a more fundamental problem: the heterogeneous coalition that blocked Netanyahu’s path to power in 2021 was united only by its desire to drive him from the political scene and into a courtroom to face the charges of bribery and breach of trust that Israel’s attorney general had brought against him.

The anti-Netanyahu coalition had no coherent alternative vision, nor could it possibly produce one that would unite Jewish nationalists, left-wing Zionists, security-oriented former army generals, and Arab Islamists. And yet it administered the business of government admirably, and even produced a historic maritime border agreement with Lebanon, preventing almost certain war with Hezbollah, Iran’s heavily armed proxy.

Otherwise, the coalition’s survival strategy was to shun divisive issues, chief among them the question of Palestine. Israeli Arab nationalists in the Knesset who joined Netanyahu’s parliamentary bloc in bringing down Lapid’s government could safely claim that nothing truly changed with regard to the expansion of settlements, settlers’ hooliganism, and the continuous suppression of Palestinian resistance.

But were the Israeli Arab parliamentarians wise to pave the way for Jewish supremacists, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — the leaders of the Religious Zionism Party — who believe that it is not just Palestinians in the occupied territories who need to be suppressed? Abbas, who revolutionized Arab politics by subordinating national aspirations to material well-being, wisely opted for a third, pragmatic way. But in their competition for control of the Arab electorate, Abbas’s rivals were willing to jeopardize the legal standing and well-being of their own constituents.

That said, Netanyahu’s victory may still turn out to be Pyrrhic. The emboldened tiger of Jewish fascism that he rode to the prime minister’s office will be excruciatingly difficult to tame. He has no coalition without the 14 seats of the Religious Zionists. Bowing even partly to their demands for more determined expansionist policies in the occupied West Bank and for harsher measures against expressions of “disloyalty” among Israeli Arabs will seriously erode Israel’s international standing, and jeopardize the Abraham peace accords with four Arab countries.

Conspicuously, the first world leader to congratulate Netanyahu on his victory was Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban. Why wouldn’t he? After all, Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners are determined to push forward legislation, Orban-style, that undermines Israel’s judicial authority, reduces the Supreme Court’s prerogative to overrule unconstitutional Knesset legislation, and ends the legal proceedings against Netanyahu.

But what matters most to Israelis is the United States. President Joe Biden hasn’t yet called to congratulate Netanyahu, and leading Democrats, as well as the State Department, have already expressed concern about the incoming government’s possible deviation from “the values of an open, democratic society,” particularly with regard to minorities.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, is vice president of the Toledo International Center for Peace and the author of “Prophets Without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution (Oxford University Press, 2022).” This article was distributed by Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).