After an unprecedented fifth election in three years, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will re-enter office at the helm of one of the most right-wing governments in Israeli history. He is the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history and is currently charged with multiple counts of corruption with ongoing investigations and legal proceedings.

Netanyahu has allied with Israel's most far-right politicians in a quest to subdue the Arab community that makes up 20% of Israel’s population, take more control over the justice system, and – critics fear – dismiss his corruption trial. His Likud party, together with two ultra-Orthodox parties and the nationalist Religious Zionist Party, won a clear majority with 64 of the 120 seats in Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset, thus ousting the bloc led by centrist incumbent caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid. Lapid only won 51 seats, amid a near wipeout for the Israeli far-left Meretz, a dovish party that advocates for an independent Palestinian state and against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

The most eye-catching projected result is the performance of far-right radical Itamar Ben-Gvir and his Jewish Power party, which, as part of a bloc with other right-wing parties, secured what may be the third biggest tranche of seats in the Knesset.

Ben-Gvir, who was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement and support for Kach, a group on the Israeli and U.S. terror blacklists, wants to grant legal immunity to Israeli soldiers who shoot at Palestinians, deport rivals whom he accuses of terrorism and end Palestinian autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank.

This makeup of Israel’s voting public is not particularly novel – it was repeatedly apparent after almost every one of the recent elections but this time, the electorate revealed itself to be more unified than ever in its backing of right-wing ideologies and more supportive of Jewish Zionism over democratic pluralism. The elections came at a time of deteriorating security situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, where the Israeli military has expanded military operations in recent months and where Jewish settler vigilante violence against Palestinians spiked.

Since the beginning of 2022, 197 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank so far, which marks this year as the deadliest year for Palestinians in 16 years, a Palestinian report recently said.

Netanyahu’s policy against Palestinians

The 1996 elections in Israel saw Netanyahu steal victory from the left at the last minute, and the Israeli experience headed in a new direction, one marked by apprehension, suspicion, hostility toward Palestinians and the inability to hold productive peace talks.

Netanyahu has governed Israel for most of the past quarter century and while previously in office, he presided over a rightward drift within Israeli society – the same social shift that propelled him back to power. During his previous terms, Netanyahu adopted a series of laws that discriminate against Arab citizens of Israel, helped entrench the occupation of the West Bank, empowered the far-right and oversaw the collapse of peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

During his past governments, Palestinians have faced daily discrimination, dispossession, repression of dissent, killings, and injuries – all as a part of a system designed to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.

Although Netanyahu’s governments almost always governed in coalition with at least one centrist party, setting a limit on how far right his governments could move, in this election, he allied only with far-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties unrestrained by any centrist forces, taking Israel into unmapped territory.

Ben-Gvir, who supports terror organizations and incites racism, is eyeing the Interior Ministry portfolio, a post that would put him in charge of the Israeli police and policies around Jerusalem's holy sites, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

His political partner, Bezalel Smotrich has proposed a raft of new laws to strip the justice system of some of its powers, including overriding the Supreme Court and changing the criminal code – which would drop the charges of fraud and breach of trust from Netanyahu's corruption trial.

Smotrich said he wants to be defense minister, a role that also oversees Israeli policy in occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza besides the approval of settlement construction. Smotrich has a history of making racist remarks about Arab citizens of Israel.

Gvir and Smotrich are considered radical even by the standards of Israel’s right wing. Both men are known to regularly harass Palestinians on the street in occupied East Jerusalem, including hurling profanity at residents, as well as leading settler marches and causing friction, frequently resulting in the arrests and injuries of Palestinians, especially in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which has become a hub for Jewish illegal settlement.

As Netanyahu will rely on the two far-right politicians to pass laws to stop his corruption trial, they will have a lot of leverage to get the positions and the policies they want.

Netanyahu’s new coalition allies’ priorities will probably heighten tensions with the Palestinians, which could embarrass Israel’s Arab and American partners.

The tensions underscore the complexity of Netanyahu’s far-right allies who want to weaken and overhaul Israel’s justice system, giving politicians more control of judicial appointments and loosening the Supreme Court’s oversight of the parliamentary process. Those allies could make such policies a condition of their joining his coalition.

They also want to end Palestinian autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank and have a history of antagonizing the Palestinian Arab minority within Israel itself, a track record that has raised fears that the new government could roil Jewish-Arab tensions in Israel and curb any remaining hope of an end to the occupation.

Two-state solution

Experts predict that back in office, Netanyahu will be forced to tread an awkward path between mollifying hard-line allies at home and avoiding confrontations with international partners that support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The U.S. State Department has already hinted that the Biden administration has reservations about Netanyahu leading a bloc that is ideologically homogeneous in ways never seen before, with a majority of religious nationalists and ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) parties set to enter government and likely to work cohesively for the next four years, unlike in the past.

Together with the Haredi parties, this coalition will be held together by a type of theocratic Jewish supremacy, which will manifest on the ground primarily as intensified repression of Palestinians and other non-Jewish minorities. They will push forward a nationalist right-wing agenda the likes of which Israel has not seen in many years.

It remains to be seen whether that frees Netanyahu to follow the agenda of his far-right allies, or if it forces him to act as a brake on their most extreme excesses against Palestinians.

In other ways, his return is a leap into the unknown.