Why I'm relieved Netanyahu won

posted on: Mar 18, 2015

Many had hoped that Benjamin Netanyahu would be defeated in yesterday’s Israeli election. I was not one of them.

Many had already written him off – pre-election polls showed his Likud Party lagging behind the allegedly center-left Zionist Union, headed by Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni.

But I kept in mind the 1996 election where Netanyahu was universally thought to be the loser well after the votes had been cast.

In the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, it had been expected that his “dovish” successor Shimon Peres, who had launched a bloody invasion of Lebanon months earlier in the hope of proving to the electorate his tough “security” credentials, would easily win.

But on that election night, Netanyahu told his supporters, “The hour is still early and the night is long.” As the votes were counted, he pulled ahead beating Peres and securing his first term as prime minister.

Netanyahu did it again on Tuesday. With virtually all the votes counted, Likud has thirty seats, the Zionist Union has 24 and the Joint List of predominantly Arab parties is in third place with fourteen.

Source: electronicintifada.net