To many casual observers, the outcome of Israel’s election on Tuesday pitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition against a group of opposition parties should not be in doubt.
Mr. Netanyahu and his government were in power in the years leading up to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attacks and on the day itself, when Israel suffered the worst security lapse and the largest loss of life on a single day in the nation’s history. In the three years since, Israel has been in a state of perpetual war, fighting in Gaza without dislodging Hamas and in Lebanon without eliminating its foe, Hezbollah, while going multiple rounds with Iran.
It has created a new security zone that must be patrolled by the Israeli military in southern Syria, and steadily increased the number of soldiers deployed in the West Bank to try to tackle Palestinian terrorism as well as the mushrooming Israeli settler terrorism against Palestinians.
All of this has taken a toll on Israelis who have served hundreds of days in reserve units, spent countless hours inside bomb shelters as Iranian and Houthi missiles and Hezbollah rockets rained down on Israeli cities, weathered the collapse of small businesses and watched Israel veer from diplomatic crisis to diplomatic crisis.
It seems as if voters would be more than ready to turn against the man who has presided over all of this. Yet polls consistently show Mr. Netanyahu with an unmovable base of core supporters, and the parties that make up his coalition are running neck and neck with the four Jewish opposition parties. If the election results in a deadlock, which appears the likeliest outcome, Mr. Netanyahu could continue as prime minister in a transitional government, defying near-universal predictions in the months after Oct. 7 that the catastrophe would bring the definitive end to his long political career.
Mr. Netanyahu’s political resilience is based in part on the following he has cultivated, similar to President Trump’s bottomless support with his MAGA core, but also on his cleverly crafted narrative of growing Israeli triumphs that appeals to a large segment of Israelis.
His message is not one of three years of unresolved wars and growing challenges. It is that Israel has won — and is on the way to even greater victories. In the picture he paints, Israel now controls a majority of Gaza with the consent of the international community; drove Hezbollah from southern Lebanon; contributed to the downfall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, denying Iran its land bridge across the Levant; and most important, acted in concert with the United States to destroy Iranian nuclear sites and kill Iran’s top leadership. In Mr. Netanyahu’s world, these are unprecedented achievements that few thought possible and that only he could pull off.
For many Israelis, the message lands. For the first time in nearly two decades, rockets from Gaza are not terrorizing Israelis in southern Israel. Northern Israel is no longer suffering daily from Hezbollah missiles and drones. Israel has endured multiple ballistic and cruise missile barrages from Iran, but has struck back far harder and at enormous cost to Iran’s nuclear program and military capabilities. The threat of the establishment of a Palestinian state that could serve as a launchpad for terrorist attacks inside of Israel appears farther away than ever. When Mr. Netanyahu argues that Israel is now safer and more secure than it has ever been, these Israeli voters nod along.
Mr. Netanyahu has also done his best to sow doubts about whether he and his government should be held responsible for Oct. 7. In a narrative that rhymes with a decade of right-wing American political discourse, Mr. Netanyahu’s camp alleges there is a deep-state conspiracy that stretches from the military and the security services through the bureaucracy to the legal establishment. The darkest assertions are that these actors knew that Oct. 7 would happen but purposely kept him in the dark in order to ensure his downfall, while Mr. Netanyahu himself claims that Oct. 7 would have been averted had they waked him earlier.
By encouraging this chaos of disinformation, he is shoring up his political base by fueling distrust of elites, who allegedly control the intelligence and security apparatus. In doing so, he has not only blunted the enormous advantage that the opposition naturally had around responsibility for Oct. 7, but audaciously turned it on its head.
This election campaign has demonstrated Mr. Netanyahu’s political skills to their fullest extent. For right-wing Israeli voters who have been in Mr. Netanyahu’s camp for decades and believe his promises to increase Israel’s strength, beat back pressures to create a Palestinian state and protect them from liberal elites, he appears to be delivering. Oct. 7 remains a devastating event, but they refuse to hang it around Mr. Netanyahu’s neck or concede that Israel is losing more than it is winning.
Mr. Netanyahu still has an uphill climb ahead of him. No reputable polls put his party close to being able to form a new government on its own, and the opposition has pathways to taking power — by allying with Arab parties, which are eager to support anyone other than Mr. Netanyahu — that he does not.
But Mr. Netanyahu is the ultimate political survivor. If he lives to fight another day, nobody should be surprised that millions of Israelis remain in his corner.
Dr. Michael J. Koplow is the chief policy officer of the Israel Policy Forum and a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
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