Although the polls and pundits predicted defeat and opponents were rejoicing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged with a decisive victory in last month’s election. In a bitter and exhausting campaign, Netanyahu was confronted by hostile journalists, including accusations that he and his wife had mismanaged their official residence. In the middle, he went to Washington to challenge U.S. President Barack Obama’s policies on Iran, for which he was widely attacked, and returned to travel up and down Israel every day seeking support. 

He also overcame the impact of millions in foreign money used for advertising, organizing mass rallies, and sending anti-Netanyahu activists door to door (a failed attempt to import American practice). But as he has done in the past, Netanyahu turned the attacks into weapons against his opponents. He understood that for many Israelis, including those who had differences with his policies and with his party, the images of blatant foreign manipulation were red flags. Although Netanyahu has his own foreign funders, their involvement was less visible. 

The opposition, led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, was more formidable than in previous elections. Their campaign focused on economic issues, such as the impossibly high cost of housing, and the vast gap between the well-paid middle class, including high-tech workers, and low-level workers earning a minimum wage and unable to support their families. A new party formed by Moshe Kahlon, who broke away from Likud over economic failures, emerged and gained traction.

But while Israelis talked economics, many again voted on the basis of security. In this dimension, Netanyahu trumped Herzog, who lacks experience and the image of strength seen as necessary to defend Israeli vital interests. Netanyahu benefited from the leadership he showed during the gruelling summer war in Gaza. For 51 days, through 4,563 rockets, terror tunnels, and 72 Israeli deaths, every one painful, Netanyahu was attacked from all sides. Coalition partners Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman accused him of being too cautious and not crushing Hamas, while international pressure, primarily from the United States, constantly demanded ceasefire agreements that would leave Hamas with the capability to resume attacks at any time. But neither claim convinced Israelis who support Netanyahu’s tough pragmatism in dealing with Hamas and responding to wider threats of terror, including on the Golan Heights along the Syrian border.

Herzog was careful to avoid the lofty rhetoric and promises of ideal peace that Israelis see as entirely unrealistic. But the Labor party, which added Livni’s faction under the heading of the Zionist Union, remains associated in the public eye with the Oslo disaster. Livni’s record added to these concerns, including her actions as foreign minister during the 2006 Lebanon war, which ended with a largely unenforced agreement and UN resolution pretending to disarm Hezbollah. The rotation agreement that would have made Livni prime minister after two years was viewed with great concern, and in the last days of the campaign, she declared that this agreement would not be implemented.

Ethnic, social and cultural factors (a form of Israeli class conflict) also remained important. The religious and traditional voters who make up the majority of Jewish Israelis continued their allegiance to the right of the Israeli political spectrum, not trusting or feeling comfortable with the secular or anti-religious westernized left. The money and campaign gimmicks (pizza and beer parties) that were imported, at great expense, from the United States, under the slogan “anybody but Bibi,” added to this alienation.

In a marathon at the end, Netanyahu put all of these concerns together, convincing voters who do not trust Labor and the left to abandon the smaller parties and vote Likud. Against the odds, he won a fourth term as prime minister. Now, he must apply the intensity he showed in the campaign not only on Iran, Hamas, Syria and other external threats, but most importantly in seriously addressing the housing crisis and other core economic concerns.