Illustration by Andy Friedman

For twenty years, many people in Israel and in the West have expressed the hope that Benjamin Netanyahu would prove to be the Richard Nixon of the State of Israel. Not the paranoid Nixon of the Watergate scandals or the embittered Nixon raving drunkenly at the White House portraits at four in the morning but the Nixon who yearned to enter the pantheon of statesmen, and who defied his Red-baiting past and initiated diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Wasn’t it possible that Netanyahu, whose political biography was steeped in the intransigent nationalism of the Revisionist movement, was just the right politician to make a lasting peace with the Palestinians?

It is amazing to recall how long this fantasy persisted. Even President Obama, whose relationship with Netanyahu is now poisoned by mistrust, once suspended disbelief. “There’s the famous example of Richard Nixon going to China,” he said, in 2009. “A Democrat couldn’t have gone to China. A liberal couldn’t have gone to China. But a big anti-Communist like Richard Nixon could open that door. Now, it’s conceivable that Prime Minister Netanyahu can play that same role.” Netanyahu, as he went on building settlements, deftly kept this illusion alive. In a speech six years ago, at Bar-Ilan University, and in comments as recently as last year, he spoke of his conditional support for “two states for two peoples.”

In last week’s Israeli elections, Netanyahu did play the role of Nixon—except that he did not go to China. Nor did he go to Ramallah. He went racist. In 1968, Nixon spoke the coded language of states’ rights and law-and-order politics in order to heighten the fears of white voters in the South, who felt diminished and disempowered by the civil-rights movement and by the Democrat in the White House, Lyndon B. Johnson. Nixon’s swampy maneuvers helped defeat the Democrat Hubert Humphrey and secure the South as an electoral safe haven for more than forty years.

Netanyahu, a student—practically a member—of the G.O.P., is no beginner at this demagogic game. In 1995, as the leader of the opposition, he spoke at rallies where he questioned the Jewishness of Yitzhak Rabin’s attempt to make peace with the Palestinians through the Oslo Accords. This bit of code was not lost on the ultra-Orthodox or on the settlers. Netanyahu refused to rein in fanatics among his supporters who carried signs portraying Rabin as a Nazi or wearing, à la Arafat, a kaffiyeh.

Last week, Netanyahu, sensing an electoral threat from a center-left coalition led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, unleashed a campaign finale steeped in nativist fear and hatred of the Other. This time, there was not a trace of subtlety. “Right-wing rule is in danger,” he warned his supporters. “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.” On Israeli TV, he said, “If we don’t close the gap in the next few days, Herzog and Livni, supported by Arabs and leftist N.G.O.s, will form the next government.” (Twenty per cent of the Israeli citizenry is Arab.) He warned darkly of “left-wing people from outside,” including perfidious “Scandinavians,” and “tens of millions of dollars” being used to “mobilize the Arab vote.” Pro-Likud phone banks reminded voters that Netanyahu’s opponents had the support of “Hussein Obama.”

The day before the election, Netanyahu made it clear that, after so many years of periodically flashing the Nixon-goes-to-China card to keep the center-left and the meddling “foreigners” at bay, he would play a new hand. “Whoever moves to establish a Palestinian state or intends to withdraw from territory is simply yielding territory for radical Islamic terrorist attacks against Israel,” he said in an interview with NRG, a right-leaning Israeli news site. Pressed to say if this meant that he would never agree to a Palestinian state, he answered, “Indeed.”

Netanyahu’s survival instincts are impressive. While he was arousing fear of Arabs and Scandinavians, he was relying on the support of an actual foreign patron, Sheldon Adelson, the American billionaire and casino operator. Adelson owns and publishes Israel Hayom (Israel Today), the country’s highest-circulation daily—a propaganda sheet whose sole purpose is to support the Prime Minister and Likud. Adelson is Netanyahu’s piggy bank and reflects a cruder version of his ideological impulses. Adelson has dismissed the Palestinians as “an invented people,” and he doesn’t mind if Israel strays from democratic principles and norms: “I don’t think the Bible says anything about democracy.” He was in a seat of honor and beaming with satisfaction when, three weeks ago, Netanyahu defied Obama and delivered his speech to Congress opposing a nuclear deal with Iran.

Now that he has been reëlected, Netanyahu has started to walk back his remarks, telling interviewers that he didn’t mean what he said about “droves” of Arabs, that he is all for a secure two-state solution. Nixon goes to China—again! But why should anyone believe it? Netanyahu’s victory—the way he achieved it and what it says about the politics of the Israeli majority—is clarifying. Josh Earnest, President Obama’s spokesman, said that the Administration was unmoved by Netanyahu’s post-election attempts to make nice, and declared that “the United States is in a position to reëvaluate our thinking.” The Republicans’ position is clear—you get the sense that their congressional leadership would like to see Netanyahu go big-time and get on the ballot in Iowa and New Hampshire—but what about Hillary Clinton? Will she have the political courage to speak frankly and risk alienating some of her more conservative donors? The Palestinians, for their part, have every reason to believe that Netanyahu has shown both his hand and his heart; they will likely drop any thought of negotiations and take their campaign for statehood to the United Nations. For the first time, they may not face a reflexive veto from the United States.

Netanyahu, of course, does not view himself as Richard Nixon. In his imagination, he is Winston Churchill, the valorous protector of his nation, the singular leader of clear, unerring vision. Nearly two hundred former Israeli military and security chiefs, none of them naïve about the multiple dangers of the Middle East, have declared that further brinkmanship threatens the long-term stability of the nation. But Netanyahu is sure that he knows better. The tragedy is that the likely price of his vainglory is the increasing isolation of a country founded as a democratic refuge for a despised and decimated people. He will soon surpass David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest consecutively serving Prime Minister. Unfortunately, this has given Netanyahu plenty of time to erode the tone of his country’s political discourse. And so now, as he forms an unabashedly right-wing and religious government, he stands in opposition not only to the founding aspirations of his nation but also to those Israelis—Jews and Arabs—who stand for tolerance, equality, democratic ideals, and a just, secure peace. ♦