Benjamin Netanyahu is an old hand at Israel’s equivalent of the “October surprise”, reliably making incendiary remarks on election eve designed to both rally the faithful in his Likud party and undercut any rivals on the right and the far right threatening his grip on the prime minister’s office.

The successful formula, repeated over the last decade in office, has always followed a reliable pattern: scare any wavering supporters with the idea that Arab voters might come out in force while grabbing any nationalist votes by promising settlement building, annexation or refusal to withdraw.

But what has often turned out to be rhetoric may this time be reality with the most sympathetic president in decades in the Oval Office.

In the space of a few days, Netanyahu has landed his signature one-two. Ironically the only real surprise is how little of a surprise his latest moves are.

First was the warning a few days ago that “they” – Israeli-Arab voters – were trying to steal next week’s election, while he has been thwarted by the left and media in his plan to stop it (blocking the naked voter-suppression tactic of putting cameras in polling stations).

Next up was the promise on Tuesday that if he won again, Israel would annex the Jordan valley and the northern Dead Sea, while suggesting more annexation might be on the cards in the occupied West Bank when Donald Trump finally unveils his “peace plan”.

If it sounds familiar, it is because Israeli voters, Palestinians – and the world at large – have seen this show before.

In 2015 Netanyahu made a similar play, goading supporters with his infamous claim that “Arab voters are coming out in droves” while insisting that Israel would build anywhere it chose inside Jerusalem and never withdraw from the occupied territories. Then Netanyahu was speaking then Barack Obama was in the White House, a president with whom he did not see eye to eye.

If the language is harsher and bolder this time round – in the second election in six months in Israel – it is because it is far from certain that Trump would resist any moves towards annexation, after he controversially moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognised Israel’s claim over the Golan Heights.

What once was talk now seems very possible with Trump’s backing.

And while Israel has long insisted it needs to remain in the Jordan valley to maintain a “security buffer” beside the Jordan River, it is perhaps significant that it is this area he has said he would annex first rather than Jewish settlements in other parts of the occupied Palestinian territories.

It was a threat that Netanyahu has reiterated in recent months, most recently at the end of August, when he said during a speech in the West Bank settlement of Elkana that he planned to extend “Jewish sovereignty to all the settlements as part of the [biblical] land of Israel, as part of the state of Israel”.

So how to interpret Netanyahu’s latest statement? Perhaps by what he did not say out loud.

What is clear is that he believes the possibility of such a move may be shrinking – “a historic opportunity that we may not have again” – if Trump does not win re-election.

That phrasing also suggests that – for all the bluster – Netanyahu is not entirely certain that annexation of all the settlements will necessarily be accepted by the Trump White House, even if and when the Trump peace plan is finally published, allegedly a day after next week’s election.

The reality too is that, Washington’s possible support notwithstanding, any move to annex any of the occupied territories is certain to be sharply rejected by the vast majority of the international community and would critically undermine Netanyahu’s attempts to rally support for his hardline strategy against Tehran.

So while it is grabbing the headlines, it remains a half-promise by an anxious politician under criminal investigation, and one that is contingent on US support.

But above all it is a simple and naked electoral gambit by a populist leader who has schooled the world repeatedly in the viability of such crude electoral stunts.

What is certain, as the Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, quickly responded, is that any annexation – partial or otherwise – of occupied Palestinian land would destroy the last pretence of any remnant of a peace process – with Netanyahu as its “prime destroyer”.