Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel fell short of outright victory on Tuesday night. But he has still emerged with a good chance of clinging to power.
Mr. Netanyahu, 77, has plenty of political blessings to count after the vote. His Likud party is set to remain the largest in the Israeli Parliament, defying the pre-election polls. His rivals, led by the former general Gadi Eisenkot, secured far less support and have been left more divided than expected.
Analysts say the result, with neither bloc securing enough votes to form a clear majority, could easily lead to weeks or months of political gridlock — a scenario that suits Mr. Netanyahu just fine. He will remain in charge as caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed or new elections have to be held.
It is a remarkable turnaround for Mr. Netanyahu, whose critics blamed him for failing to prevent the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest day in Israeli history. A consummate political survivor of more than three decades in Israeli politics, Mr. Netanyahu is famous for out-negotiating and manipulating almost every opponent who has tried to end his rule.
“Netanyahu is still in the driver’s seat,” said Natan Sachs, an expert on Israeli politics at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based research group. “He’s still in control of most events, and that’s where he likes to be.”
Mr. Netanyahu, the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history, still has some headaches. The hard-line coalition he formed in 2022 — the most far-right in Israeli history — is set to lose its majority in Israel’s 120-member Parliament.
Mr. Netanyahu could also end up losing if Mr. Eisenkot, whose bloc trails the prime minister’s coalition by several seats, chooses to work with the Arab parties that performed better than ever to oust him.
But Mr. Eisenkot is likely to struggle to form such an alliance, given how Israeli public opinion has shifted since the Oct. 7 attacks. Even though Arab leaders in Israel generally condemned the attacks, many Jewish Israelis still regard partnering with them as unacceptable.
“Netanyahu knew he was going to have a weaker bloc. But he knew that his goal, even if he couldn’t get a 61-seat majority, would be to prevent his rivals from forming a government,” said Mazal Mualem, who has written a biography of Mr. Netanyahu. “And it seems he’s succeeded.”
All this was hard to imagine just three years ago. Mr. Netanyahu’s public standing plunged after the Oct. 7 attacks, when 1,200 in Israel were killed and 250 were taken hostage, igniting the war in Gaza. Even fervent supporters of the prime minister feared his time in office would end because of his failure to prevent the catastrophe.
Mr. Netanyahu, however, has tenaciously clambered his way back without accepting any responsibility for the devastating security lapse. Instead, he blamed the assault on Israeli security chiefs, launched a series of military campaigns in Lebanon and Iran that killed some of Israel’s most significant foes, and ran his electoral campaign focused on amplifying fears of Israel’s Arab parties.
On Tuesday, a swath of Jewish Israelis threw their support behind him, defying Mr. Netanyahu’s critics at home and abroad. The prime minister gave a fiery speech overnight on Wednesday as initial exit polls showed he had outperformed expectations vowing to establish “a patriotic, strong, right-wing government.”
While a slight shift in the results could upend the electoral map, Mr. Netanyahu has several options for how he might stay in power.
One path would be to try to block any new government from being formed, forcing Israel to hold new elections. Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents — who threw years of energy and planning into the recent vote only to fall short — would struggle to do better in a new vote, analysts say.
“There’s a general sense that this was the opposition’s big chance,” Mr. Sachs said. “From Netanyahu’s perspective, he can throw the dice again and again.”
Another option would be to form a unity government with one of his opponents. But that will be difficult as long as Mr. Netanyahu insists on staying in the prime minister’s office.
Mr. Eisenkot has vowed not to serve under Mr. Netanyahu, although a national emergency — such as renewed fighting with Iran — could change that calculation.
Mr. Netanyahu could also try to pick off potential right-wing defectors from Mr. Eisenkot’s bloc. These include opposition leaders who served in previous Netanyahu governments, such as Naftali Bennett, who leads the center-right Together party, and Avigdor Liberman, who leads the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu.
Both men are right-wing supporters of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Both refrained from explicitly endorsing Mr. Eisenkot, Mr. Netanyahu’s main challenger, as the opposition bloc’s candidate for prime minister.
But rekindling their old partnerships with Mr. Netanyahu would be difficult. Both Mr. Bennett and Mr. Liberman have considerable bad blood with the prime minister. They have also been strident in demanding an independent commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the Oct. 7 disaster, which Mr. Netanyahu has resisted.
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.
