The fear factor giving Benjamin Netanyahu the edge

Despite liberal hopes, the veteran leader appears to have a path back to government after Israel's vote

As Israelis flocked to vote in an election that many saw as the most consequential in their history, Benjamin Netanyahu turned to his tried-and-tested playbook -- scare his rightwing base into action.

Seeking to rally his supporters, the prime minister accused parties representing Arab Israelis of trying to "steal" the vote, while warning that the Jewish state was on the "brink of ruin".

"You stand to lose everything. A government of the left and Arabs will destroy everything here," Netanyahu told a local radio station as Israelis voted on Tuesday afternoon.

Whether or not that was the deciding factor, his supporters mobilised in sufficient numbers to deliver a stinging result for the Zionist opposition, though not the clear victory that Netanyahu and his far-right coalition sought.

With 86 per cent of the votes counted, Israel faces a period of political deadlock, but one in which the veteran political survivor has once again defied his sceptics to retain the upper hand.

Netanyahu's coalition of ultra-Orthodox, rightwing and ultranationalist parties is set to win about 53 seats in the Knesset, with his Likud party to be the largest in the 120-member parliament.

The coalition has shed support since the previous election and is well short of an absolute majority. Netanyahu still faces significant hurdles to return to power but has achieved his prime goal -- avoiding outright defeat -- as his coalition is predicted to gain five more seats than the four-party Zionist opposition bloc.

Once final results are announced, Israeli President Isaac Herzog will decide which leader gets the first attempt to form a government.

Netanyahu will remain as caretaker prime minister while politicians horse-trade, potentially for months, over forming a governing coalition.

It is a crushing blow to the many liberal Israelis who viewed the election as a battle for the soul of the nation. They fear that another four years of the most far-right government in Israel's history risks eroding the identity and values on which the state was founded.

While few were willing to write off Netanyahu ahead of the election, the conditions appeared favourable for an unwieldy opposition united by a desperate desire to topple him.

The divisive prime minister's popularity had plummeted after his government tried to steamroller through judicial reforms that many Israelis saw as a direct assault on a pillar of the country's democracy. He then presided over Israel's worst security failure when Hamas launched its October 7 2023 attack.

His nation is deeply polarised and isolated internationally, as Israel's relentless retaliatory war in Gaza and rampant settler violence in the occupied West Bank have drawn condemnation and rare sanctions from traditional western allies.

At home, civil society activists mobilised in large numbers, setting up "war rooms" and encouraging Israelis overseas to return to vote, which they did in their tens of thousands.

But the results suggest that a sizeable proportion of the electorate in a nation that has lurched rightwards still believes the prime minister's warnings that he is the only leader who can be trusted on security.

And Netanyahu is the master at tapping into Jewish Israelis' fears.

Two days before Tuesday's vote he posted an AI-generated image of a nuclear cloud over Tel Aviv, alongside extracts from an article by a rightwing Israeli analyst warning that Israelis risked a "second Holocaust" if they didn't vote for Netanyahu. Separately, he earned a rebuke from the central bank for saying he was looking into using cryptocurrencies to circumvent potential sanctions on Israel.

He had also urged US President Donald Trump to launch a new, intense phase of the US-Israeli war against Iran ahead of the vote.

Still, the opposition bloc does have a potential path to government: aligning with the Arab parties. They represent Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who account for about a fifth of the population and have endured four years of hatred, harassment and intimidation under Netanyahu's watch.

As a result, they turned out in record numbers, with the two Arab parties collectively winning up to 19 seats.

Much will rest with Gadi Eisenkot, a gruff former military chief who leads Yashar, a centrist party that gained the most seats among the opposition alliance but has shown reluctance to co-operate with the Arab parties.

To succeed, the 66-year-old relative political neophyte would have to seek their support, while also convincing his rightwing opposition allies, including Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman -- who have rejected any such move throughout the campaign -- of the need to co-operate with the Arab parties.

There is a recent precedent, but Israeli analysts remain sceptical.

The last time the opposition successfully united to defeat Netanyahu in 2021, the key factor was Bennett's and Yair Lapid's historic decision to include Mansour Abbas, leader of Ra'am, an Islamist party, in their governing coalition. It was the first time an Arab party had formally been part of an Israeli government.

However, that coalition collapsed within a year as it struggled with a wafer-thin majority and constant attacks by Netanyahu and his allies. The political atmosphere towards Palestinians of Israeli citizenship has become even more toxic since.

And Netanyahu -- a ruthless political tactician who has spent years outmanoeuvring and manipulating his opponents, and is still on trial for corruption -- will fight to the bitter end. He will already be plotting to entice members of the opposition alliance to his side.

Another potential scenario is Eisenkot coming under pressure from Herzog and Trump -- who publicly endorsed Netanyahu -- to form a unity government with the prime minister.

But the last time that happened in 2020, Netanyahu forced the collapse of the coalition less than a year into its term, just before he was supposed to hand over a rotating premiership.

Another outcome is an unbreakable stalemate. Israel has form for this. It endured a string of inconclusive elections during the past decade as votes in effect became referendums on Netanyahu's polarising rule. But never at such a critical moment in its history, or with so much at stake.