Award-winning Journalist Anshel Pfeffer on Israeli Politics

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: You know, I’m sure it’s been an extremely long night. Everyone is still waiting to see even yet as another, you know, day draws yet to a close on what the precise alignment will be. But were you surprised by the results? I guess most live by the fact that Benny Gantz really did show better than perhaps many thoughts.

ANSHEL PFEFFER, AUTHOR, “BIBI: THE TURBULENT LIFE AND TIMES OF BENJAMIN NETANYAHU”: Well, I wasn’t surprised by Netanyahu winning. He has had a majority, not a large majority. This wasn’t a landslide. But he has had a majority of right-wing and religious voters supporting both his Likud Party and the parties of his coalition. It was going to be a difficult challenge for Benny Gantz and for the rest of the centre-left opposition to take away enough votes from the right-wing coalition and somehow block Netanyahu’s path to another government. They took about two seats away from the coalition, which went from 67 to 65 seats in total in the new Knesset but that was nowhere near enough to deny Netanyahu his fifth government.

AMANPOUR: So, what will this mean? How will the next few days play out? When will we know how, you know, a coalition could be formed?

PFEFFER: Well, Netanyahu’s path is quite clear, he’s got the parties who already sat with him in the previous coalition, they have the majority. In the next few days they will meet with the president of Israel, with Reuven Rivlin. That each of the parties will say who they support as Israel’s next prime minister. Once Rivlin has met with all the parties and has collected all the endorsements, he will probably call upon Netanyahu, give him the first crack at forming the government, the three- week — he has a three-week period to do so. They will be into a coalition building period of meetings between the different parties’ negotiation teams. We can expect the next couple of weeks Netanyahu to form his coalition. But this time, it’s not just forming a government. Netanyahu doesn’t need his coalition only to allow him to be prime minister and to govern Israel. He needs something extra from his coalition this time.

This time he wants his coalition to shield him in some way from the impending indictments, from the fact that he may be very soon be put on trial for three — on three cases of corruption. And he’s hoping to get from his coalition some kind of strategy which either legislation, which will give him immunity or perhaps even that will stand behind him despite being charged in court, that’s is an unprecedented situation, an Israeli prime minister in office while a defendant in a criminal case. And Netanyahu said already in private, if it will reach that, he will not resign and he needs his coalition to stand by him. So, the price that the parties will be demanding from him will be especially high this time. It’s going to be Netanyahu’s most difficult, most fateful negotiation ever, and he’s been through a lot of them.