In a feverish last-minute push to shore up support among right-wing voters, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that if elected he would not allow the creation of a Palestinian state, rejecting publicly the foundation for years of international efforts to negotiate an end to decades of Arab-Israeli hostility.
“Whoever moves to establish a Palestinian state or intends to withdraw from territory is simply yielding territory for radical Islamic attacks against Israel,” he told the Israeli news site NRG. Asked if that meant no Palestinian state as long as he was prime minister, he replied, “Indeed.”
The public repudiation of an idea he endorsed first in 2009 marked the desperation Netanyahu may be feeling as Israeli voters cast ballots Tuesday in an election that just three months ago was thought likely to result in Netanyahu winning an unprecedented fourth term in office.
The conventional wisdom then was that there was no alternative to the long-serving leader and that he, boosted by a rightist majority in Israel’s Parliament, would win a new mandate for his conservative policies.
But three months is an eternity in Israel’s volatile politics, and the campaign instead turned on bread-and-butter issues that eclipsed Netanyahu’s warnings of looming security threats. The last public polls before the election, released Friday, showed Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party trailing by four parliamentary seats behind the center-left Zionist Union alliance headed by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni.
Facing what could be one of the biggest miscalculations in recent Israeli politics, Netanyahu doubled down on his policies Monday, using a last campaign stop to appeal to conservative voters who support Jewish settlement on land occupied by Israel in 1967.
Netanyahu used the backdrop of Har Homa, a Jewish settlement built on West Bank land annexed to Jerusalem, to warn that Herzog and Livni would cede the area and allow it to be turned into “Hamas-stan,” a reference to the Islamist militant group Hamas.
He asserted that in promoting Har Homa’s establishment in 1997 during his first term as prime minister, he intended “to protect the southern gateway to Jerusalem” and that the development was meant to form a barrier between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
The move created “huge objection, because this neighborhood is in a location that prevents Palestinian contiguity,” he said. That acknowledged the accuracy of international complaints, including from the United States, that the settlement would hamper the creation of a territorially contiguous Palestinian state.
Netanyahu’s statements seemed aimed to halt the seepage of Likud votes to other conservative parties. Netanyahu’s main rival on the right, the pro-settlement Jewish Home party, opposes a Palestinian state.
In Washington, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest declined comment on Netanyahu’s remarks. “You’ve observed that I have worked assiduously to avoid commenting on the claims made on the campaign trail by American politicians,” he said. “That rule, at least in this case, applies to Israeli politicians, too.”
Polls predict that Likud will take 20 to 22 parliamentary seats, compared with 24 to 26 for the Zionist Union. But under Israel’s election system, Netanyahu still might be able to form a majority coalition in the 120-seat legislature with the support of rightist and ultra-Orthodox factions who’ve been his traditional allies.
But Netanyahu has emerged from the election race far more vulnerable than expected, with Herzog potentially positioned to put together a coalition under his leadership.
The campaign brought forward an array of grass-roots activists, social action groups and seasoned security veterans whose calls for change boosted Netanyahu’s rivals and fueled public discontent with his performance.
“People are getting tired of him, and there are real problems that people feel in their pocket,” said Abraham Diskin, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Netanyahu never has been wildly popular, but the lack of a convincing alternative has led many Israelis to vote for him in previous elections. This time, however, the undercurrents of dissatisfaction seem to have taken their toll.
Two reports last month by Israel’s state comptroller proved particularly damaging to Netanyahu’s campaign. One documented exorbitant spending of public funds on food, cleaning and other services at the prime minister’s residences in Jerusalem and the posh coastal town of Caesaria.
The second cited a steep rise in housing prices on Netanyahu’s watch, a pressing concern of many Israelis unable to afford an apartment.
Netanyahu was focused at the time on sounding the alarm about Iran’s nuclear program, traveling to Washington to deliver a controversial speech in Congress against a possible diplomatic deal with Tehran. The speech soured relations with the Obama administration and gave the prime minister only a short-lived bump in the polls.
After the housing report, Netanyahu issued a response that many saw as startlingly out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Israelis. “When we talk about housing prices, about the cost of living, I don’t for a minute forget life itself,” he said. “The greatest challenge to our life now is Iran arming itself with nuclear weapons.” The comments were widely ridiculed on social media.
Netanyahu also has been the target of blistering attacks by several former security chiefs and army generals, who have accused him of failing to deliver on promises of security and leading a misguided policy on Iran that has antagonized Washington.
Addressing a mass opposition rally this month in Tel Aviv, Meir Dagan, the former chief of Israeli’s Mossad spy agency, said Netanyahu’s years in office had been marked by diplomatic stagnation and deepening domestic woes.
“Enemies do not scare me,” Dagan said. “I am concerned about our leadership. I am concerned about a lack of vision, a loss of direction, a loss of determination and a loss of leadership by example.”
Analysts say the cumulative effect of such criticism was reflected in Likud’s recent slide in the polls.
Still, poll numbers have proven inaccurate in the past, and with an estimated 10 percent to 20 percent of voters still undecided, predictions are difficult, according to Diskin, who formerly served as a statistician for Israel’s central elections commission.
“What you see in the polls is not what you see in the elections,” he said.