As of this writing, the New Right party led by ministers Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked has not garnered sufficient votes to get into the Knesset — it did not amass the four-mandate threshold. When the extent of his party’s election failure became clear after the polls closed on April 9, Bennett — the man who crowned himself Israel’s next defense minister — claimed the soldiers would take care of his party the way he always looks out for them. He was referring to the votes of tens of thousands of serving soldiers that are counted after the other ballots and which could yield a sufficient number of votes for the New Right to cross the electoral threshold into the Knesset. However, even if the soldiers save him from oblivion, Bennett’s party will only have four representatives in the new Knesset, depriving him and Shaked of any significant sway in the radical right-wing government that Netanyahu is expected to form. That said, the seeds sown by Naftali Bennett in Netanyahu’s fourth government will sprout in Netanyahu’s fifth.

Bennett first flew the banner of annexation of West Bank lands in 2012. In the 2019 election campaign, he drew all the right-wing parties, including Netanyahu himself, into a competition of annexation declarations. The two words “territorial annexation,” once considered acceptable only in radical circles, have slipped into legitimate public discourse. After the right wing crushed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, depicting him as an obstacle to peace, and with most Israelis disbelieving that peace with the Palestinians based on a two state for two people solution is possible, the annexation prospect no longer sounds so absurd. As far as the right-wing electorate is concerned, annexation may even be de rigeur.

Netanyahu has thus far thwarted all attempts by the right to legislate annexation of the West Bank. In February 2018, he blocked a proposed bill to impose Israeli sovereignty in the settlements, authored by Knesset members Yoav Kisch of the Likud and Bezalel Smotrich, then a member of HaBayit HaYehudi and now No. 2 in the alliance known as the United Right. Netanyahu argued at the time that promoting such legislation prior to the presentation of President Donald Trump’s highly touted plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace could undermine future annexation. That was also the argument he used to block a proposed bill imposing Israeli sovereignty on the settlement town of Ma’ale Adumim.

Things are different now. Netanyahu will have no choice. Despite his tremendous achievement in obtaining the renewed trust of the Israeli electorate that granted him a fifth term in office, Netanyahu is more vulnerable to pressure than ever before. On April 6, Netanyahu said in a Channel 12 interview that discussions were underway on extending Israeli sovereignty to the Etzion settlement bloc. To buttress his argument in this regard, Netanyahu noted that he had convinced Trump to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the formerly Syrian Golan Heights and over Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “I will not divide Jerusalem, I will not evacuate any community and I will make sure we control the territory west of Jordan,” he declared. To underscore the seriousness of his intentions and draw the borders of his planned annexation, he added, “Will we move ahead to the next stage? Yes. I will extend sovereignty, but I don't distinguish between the settlement blocs and the isolated ones because each settlement is Israeli and I will not hand it over to Palestinian sovereignty.”