And so it might seem that the Revisionists have finally after nearly 100 years won the fight over what Zionism will look like. But in reality, Prime Minister Netanyahu is more conservative and more extreme than the founder of the movement. Mr. Jabotinsky’s attitude toward the national aspirations of the Palestinians was, in his own words, one of “polite indifference.” Mr. Netanyahu’s attitude is one of active and unrelenting hostility. Mr. Jabotinsky would have been a tough negotiator; Mr. Netanyahu is a non-negotiator.

Mr. Netanyahu is the proponent of the doctrine of permanent conflict. He rules out the possibility of a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians because he is not prepared to concede their most basic demand: an independent Palestinian state over the West Bank and Gaza with a capital city in East Jerusalem. Far from seeking to bridge the gap, he actually deepens it by turning a political dispute into a clash of civilizations. No Israeli leader before him ever demanded that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. When Mr. Netanyahu demanded in 2009 that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, he knew that no Palestinian leader, however moderate, could possibly accept it. Politics and religion are an explosive mixture, and by emphasizing the religious aspect of the conflict, he makes it more intractable.

Nothing illustrates Mr. Netanyahu’s vision of Israel more clearly than the Nation-State Law passed by the Knesset last July. It states that the right to national self-determination in the country is “unique to the Jewish people.” It demotes Arabic from it status as an official language. It allows the state to differentiate among its citizens on the basis of race, ethnicity and religion. It is the polar opposite of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which promised social and political equality to all of Israel’s inhabitants regardless of religion, race or sex.

Israel’s redefinition of itself as an exclusive, ethnocentric Jewish state is now enshrined in law. Mr. Netanyahu has left no room for doubt that this is precisely how he views the country that he has just been re-elected to lead. “Israel is not a state of all its citizens,” he wrote a few weeks before the election. “Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people — and only it.”

Three days before Israelis went to the polls, Mr. Netanyahu announced his intention, if re-elected, to formally annex the Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. The timing was no doubt determined by electoral expediency. But if legislation does follow, it seems likely that it will be with the blessing of President Trump, who has already obliged Mr. Netanyahu by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. Annexation of part of the West Bank will sound the death knell of the two-state solution, and it may well ignite a third Palestinian intifada.