Netanyahu has lost steam in last week before elections

With less than 24 hours before Israeli elections, the latest polls only bring bad news for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, although his victory is not in question.

Unless a political cataclysm occurs, Netanyahu will get the most votes Tuesday. But what polls announced Friday is perhaps not going to help when putting in place a stable coalition government in which his ‘mastery’ will be allowed to do and undo at will.

If polls are correct, his success will depend more on partners in the Executive, which, according to experts, could be formed by the extreme right and religious parties. The inclusion of center-left parties in the coalition becomes more palatable to the world, something that Netanyahu does not rule out.

The polls released on Friday agreed that the center-left block greatly shortened the distance with respect to the right. That is possible, in part, because the alliance led by Netanyahu has plummeted, to the point of losing up to 10 seats compared to its current strength in the Knesset parliament.

With about 15% undecided, the sum of the support that all the parties of the right and extreme right would receive is comparable to that projected for the left.

The difference is that the right in principle also counts on the votes of the ultra-orthodox formations, while it is highly unlikely that the left chooses to cooperate with the Arab parties, traditionally subjected to ostracism in the Knesset. So Netanyahu’s victory is not in doubt, but his strength and his coalition government are.

“The question is not whether I will win the elections, but whether there will be a stable direction behind the wheel. There are people here and there that say, ‘We also want to drive the wheel’, but when there are too many hands, the car could overturn, “Netanyahu said in an interview that the Maariv newspaper.

Analysts emphasize the political wallop posed to the Prime Minister this year, especially if you consider that it was Netanyahu himself who decided to call for early elections in January, with the aim of strengthening its comfortable majority and, so that once he consolidated his power, he could engage in complicated missions as a possible offensive against Iran or the extent of the challenge to the international community because of the construction in the settlements.

Proof of the Prime Minister’s anxiety is his unusual openness to the press. Netanyahu gives interviews these days to multiple local media. The idea is to stop the bleeding of votes and a desperate attempt to recover the migrated to the far right.

Netanyahu presumes that “there is a strong representation of settlers in the Likud”, his party, and anticipates that “the days when the bulldozers destroyed settlements are far behind.” Finally he warned voters that a vote splitting on the right could lead to the arrival of left leaning parties in government.