The evening before he boarded his Feb. 2 flight to Uganda for a historic meeting with the head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped by a Bar Mitzva celebration for the twin sons of the Likud's Knesset faction head Knesset member Miki Zohar. The hall was packed with some 2,000 Likud members who endured lengthy security checks as well as government ministers and Knesset members from the ultra-Orthodox parties aligned with the Likud. The brief appearance at the event must have been important for Netanyahu, despite its timing on the eve of one of his most important diplomatic missions of recent years.
From now until election day on March 2, Netanyahu’s campaign will swing between forays into Likud territory and party bastions in Israel’s geographic periphery and diplomatic missions abroad. In between, he may even manage a small US-approved territorial annexation in the West Bank, perhaps of the settlement town of Maale Adumim — all designed to obscure the fact that the candidate for the country’s top job has been indicted for bribery.
A week after the indictment was filed in Jerusalem District Court on Jan. 28, Netanyahu can boast of significant achievements. He stemmed the bleeding of his party and even picked up a few additional Knesset seats in the polls thanks to a diplomatic blitz, which began with his Jan. 23 hosting of the prestigious summit of world leaders who came to Jerusalem for the World Holocaust Forum. It continued with his participation in the Jan. 28 White House ceremonial unveiling of President Donald Trump’s plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Though Netanyahu and his right-wing allies had hoped the plan would allow them to immediately annex West Bank territories, obtaining US support in principle for settlement annexation was no mean feat.
The Trump plan is distinctly pro-Israel. It changes the paradigm of the 1993 Oslo Accord, which had served as the basis for negotiations between the sides for almost three decades. It is the legacy Netanyahu seeks to leave and it enjoys broad public consensus: Even the opposition Blue and White Party views the so-called “deal of the century” as historic.
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