Israel’s Election: The Parallel Reality

It may be too soon to say who’s going to emerge as Israel’s next prime minister. It’s not too soon, however, to suggest that we have just seen yet another election in which the voters backed Prime Minister Netanyahu despite predictions that his time was up. That emerged to such a degree that one Israeli journalistic sage, Amit Segal, says the surprising results make him think that for three years we’ve been living in a “parallel reality.”Meaning, it’s about more than this election and who should be premier. “If the polls were that far off,” Mr. Segal reckons, “perhaps they were also wrong about what the public wanted on the hostage deal, the war and who should be prime minister. In other words, we’ve been living in a reality we thought was unfolding, when in fact a different one was unfolding.” Seems it’s not for nothing that Mr. Netanyahu is by far Israel’s longest serving premier.As the sun sets over Israel on Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc has amassed 53 seats, with opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot collecting 48. The Arab parties, in an astonishing display of strength, won 19 mandates. The Arabs could play kingmakers, though Mr. Eisenkot, who sought to unify what some call the “Zionist opposition,” has therefore been reluctant to turn to them. There is the small matter that some on the Arab side don’t exactly disavow Hamas.Mr. Netanyahu would appear to have the stronger hand. If no deal is struck, he can continue until the next election at the head of a caretaker government. Or, as our Benny Avni reports, “Mr. Netanyahu might calculate that coalescing with his election rivals would ease his path” toward a “new round of joint Israeli-American strikes in Iran and widening the Abraham Accords.” At 77, even Mr. Netanyahu knows his time on the stage will not be forever.Once again, though, the Israeli premier has shown himself a political figure of the first water. His most lasting legacy could well stem not from his time in the prime minister’s office but instead from his tenure as Israel’s minister of finance. In that post he liberalized Israel’s economy, which had been shackled for decades by socialism imported to the Middle East from Eastern Europe. The Jewish state’s fisc will be forever in his debt.Those rooting for Mr. Netanyahu’s defeat were hardly confined to Tel Aviv and its environs. On Tuesday Governor Kathy Hochul, who bragged that she represents the “largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel,” also groused that her job would be “a lot easier” if the incumbent lost. Almost two years ago Senator Charles Schumer, shockingly, took to the floor of the upper chamber to call for Mr. Netanyahu to resign.President Trump, in contrast, endorsed Mr. Netanyahu. A senior adviser to the prime minister, Ophir Falk, told our A.R. Hoffman not to underestimate the resonance with Israeli voters of the bond between Messrs. Netanyahu and Trump. It could be that the president’s backing made a difference. Mr. Falk shared, in words that proved accurate, that “in a democracy, it’s the voters who decide when a leader’s time is up, not his critics.”

Israel’s Election: The Parallel Reality

Israel’s Election: The Parallel Reality

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