March 19, 2015

JERUSALEM — Israelis emboldened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a clear mandate in balloting on Tuesday, paving the way for him to lead a right-leaning and religious coalition that could be far easier to control, since his own party holds many more seats now.

But despite the resounding victory after Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-line statements in the campaign’s final days, the direction he will take in what would be his fourth term is as much a mystery as the man himself. While the new coalition will almost certainly be more purely conservative, it is also more narrowly tailored, potentially freeing its leader of the constraints that often guided his last government.

As he puts together a government in the next few weeks, Mr. Netanyahu may no longer have the center-left factions that he relied on to ease Israel’s relations with the world and that pushed him back into negotiations with the Palestinians in 2013. But he also has gotten rid of extremists in his own party, Likud, and shrunk the Jewish Home party, which he often placated over the last two years by expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank.

 

 

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Analysts said Mr. Netanyahu would undoubtedly continue his strong opposition to the Iranian nuclear program, but might well limit settlement construction and make other gestures to soothe the Palestinian situation, while also seeking to address calls to lower the cost of living. Crucial players in the coming coalition are a new center-right party and two ultra-Orthodox factions, whose kitchen-table concerns are sure to shift the overall agenda.

Allies, antagonists and average Israelis have long struggled to understand just what Mr. Netanyahu, a deft political strategist, actually believes in, beyond his passionate commitment to Israel’s security and to the Jewish people. After a campaign widely seen as a referendum on his rule, the result may let Netanyahu be Netanyahu, which his former national security adviser, Uzi Arad, said meant more “tough pragmatism” than “stiff defiance.”

“Now that his position has been vindicated by his own base, he can take certain liberties,” Mr. Arad said. “He will not use that to take a contrarian view and then to relish the fact that he is standing firm in the face of pressure. He would probably, while fighting for Israel’s interest, and rhetorically presenting Israel’s case, and not appearing soft, he would concede here and there.”

With a commanding 30 of Parliament’s 120 seats, compared with the 24 won by his center-left opponent, Mr. Netanyahu said he would work quickly to solidify a new government. He went to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City on Wednesday, and thanked voters for backing him “against all odds and against strong forces.”

A day after expressing alarm about Israeli Arabs voting in droves in a Facebook video that prompted charges of race-baiting, Mr. Netanyahu made an attempt at mending fences by saying he would “take care of the welfare and security of all Israeli citizens.”

Isaac Herzog, the head of the center-left Zionist Union who had challenged Mr. Netanyahu, called to congratulate him and concede defeat, and later said that the “realistic option” would be to continue to lead the opposition.

“I pledge that one day, we will bring about the desired change,” Mr. Herzog said at a meeting of his slate’s newly elected lawmakers, according to Israeli news reports. “The public is waiting for us to raise our heads and march on with our way.”

First, Israel — and the world — will be watching which way Mr. Netanyahu marches.

On Iran, expect little change, analysts said. There is broad agreement across Israel with Mr. Netanyahu’s critique of the emerging deal between six world powers and Iran over its nuclear program. There was plenty of internal criticism, though, of his attempt to undermine it by making a speech to Congress against White House wishes. That, apparently, did not dissuade many voters.

“The outcome represents, basically, the fact that Iran decided who will be the prime minister in Israel,” said Yedidia Z. Stern of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group. “Iran was and is the ultimate demon for masses here in Israel. Israelis fear the future, and they trust only a strong nationalistic leader.”

As for Mr. Netanyahu’s declaration on the eve of the election that no Palestinian state would be created on his watch — contrary to his avowed support of one since 2009 — several experts said they expected him to walk it back. People close to him have already suggested that he meant only that current conditions in the region and the attitude of the Palestinian leadership make a state unrealistic now.

Several analysts also said they would not be surprised to see Mr. Netanyahu soon release the $300 million in taxes Israel collects on the Palestinians’ behalf that he has withheld since January as punishment for their joining the International Criminal Court.

And he will have more leeway on settlements, the issue that raises the most international ire. The new Parliament includes fewer settlers than the last. The pro-settler Jewish Home party shrank to eight seats from 12 and will have less sway; the last housing minister, a Jewish Home member who angered Mr. Netanyahu by announcing construction without his approval, is bound to be replaced.

“He not only defeated the left, he defeated the right,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a research organization in Jerusalem. Mr. Halevi said he did not “see a strong lobby within the coming coalition” for building outside the so-called settlement blocks Israel expects to swap for other lands in a potential deal with the Palestinians.

Building only within the blocks, Mr. Halevi noted, appeals to Moshe Kahlon, the leader of the new center-right party Kulanu — who is likely to become finance minister and have the coalition’s second-largest faction, with 10 seats.

Internal Israeli issues are also being looked at in a new light, after a turbulent few months of fierce fighting.

Mr. Kahlon’s demands to lower housing costs and root out corruption will have to be addressed. The return of ultra-Orthodox parties to the coalition after a two-year hiatus will likely lead to a backtrack on recent legislation that pushed more yeshiva students into the military draft and work force.

Among the issues that led Mr. Netanyahu to call these early elections in December was dissent in his old coalition over a “nationality bill” that would emphasize Israel’s Jewishness over its democratic nature. The bill outraged Israel’s Arab citizens — a constituency whose Parliamentary presence grew to 14 seats from 11 — as well as Jewish leaders in the Diaspora. Reviving it, especially after Mr. Netanyahu’s statements against Arabs, could deepen the societal cleavages exposed in the campaign.

“You can understand the sort of realpolitik, hawkish position that’s within the pale of serious argument, but this is purely debased politics, and appealing to the lowest emotions, divisive, racist,” Moshe Halbertal, a philosophy professor at Hebrew University, said of the prime minister’s Election Day “droves” video. “The very identity of the state, its soul as a democratic nation-state, is at stake, and he shouldn’t mess with that or touch that.”

What Mr. Netanyahu and other Likud leaders have already begun talking about is electoral reform, like a law that automatically gives the premiership to the leader of the largest party. It will be interesting to see whether Mr. Herzog, who asked Mr. Netanyahu to endorse this idea when it looked as if the Zionist Union might become the largest party, will still support it.

Then again, it may not much matter.

Mr. Netanyahu’s “victory is a personal victory,” noted Efraim Halevy, a former intelligence chief and confidant of several prime ministers, which “enables him to take a variety of decisions from a position of strength.

“The question of what is the true feeling of the prime minister is a very, very difficult question to answer, because he has been known in the past to make conflicting statements on various occasions, which have been attuned to his immediate political and other constraints of the moment,” Mr. Halevy added. “The question will be what are the political constraints he feels he has to meet.”

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