The End of Greatness: Why Israel Can’t Have Another Great President? Commentary on Aaron David Miller, Chief Scientific Advisor to Israel’s Central Election Committee

Editor’s Note: Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of “The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President.” Miller worked for both Republican and Democrat administrations in the Middle East. His opinions are not shared in this commentary. Read more opinion on CNN.

If former Saturday Night Live great and actor Bill Murray wasn’t hired as a technical adviser to Israel’s Central Elections Committee, he surely might have been. After polling done before the election predicted a fifth hung election in four years, it appeared that Israel would go for another one.

But this election seems to have produced (final figures won’t be available until week’s end) what the previous four could not: a majority for Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and his allies and the likely emergence of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.

This election was really important for Netanyahu. Had he failed to secure a governing majority – one that is likely to pass legislation to postpone or even cancel his trial – he may well have had to face the consequences of a guilty verdict or a plea bargain that would have driven him away from politics.

The left and center-left in Israel once dominated by the iconic Labor Party, the driving political force for the first three decades of independence, has been reduced to a shadow of its former self with just a handful of seats in the Knesset.

The fracturing of the left and the Arab vote gave the more cohesive and disciplined Netanyahu bloc an edge in the election, even though the center-right and right bloc of Yair Lapid made a respectable showing.

More than that Netanyahu now has a partner-rival in Gvir who, at 46, is just starting his rise in Israeli politics. It should not be surprising if Netanyahu tries to get the centrists to join his government to check Gvir or at the very least reduce his demands.

The past 5 years have seen a drop in Israeli civilian and military casualties, but the Jewish public has become less willing to lose their lives. In the wake of the 21-day war last spring — sparked by an Israeli raid on the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and responded to with rocket fire from Gaza — and the interethnic violence in so-called mixed cities, Mr. Ben-Gvir channeled Israelis’ desire for a quick and easy solution to what some call the“Palestinian problem” by proposing to resolve it by force. His party’s platform promises “the establishment of sovereignty over all parts of Eretz Israel liberated in the Six-Day War and settlement of the enemies of Israel in the Arab countries that surround our small land.”

For years Israel has been drifting to the right. According to analyst Tamar Hermann of the Israeli Democracy institute, a full 60% of the electorate is right-wing, while 12% identifies as left and the rest are in the center.

The new prime minister is dependent upon the extremists and the ultra-Orthodox parties who will have a long list of demands. The right wingers of the government have as many as they can, making him a minority in his own government.

One might be forgiven for thinking that this kind of narrow right-wing government might not last. But there may be more that binds this coalition together than divides it. The two Orthodox parties have been out of power and are eager to secure support for their religious schools and institutions.

How will the government act? It is almost certain that when Israel celebrates 75 years later, it will make the domestic and foreign policy challenges it faces worse. At home, Israel will be increasingly polarized, with an independent judiciary and rule of law under serious threat.

Like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Laden, Netanyahu would be a lot more comfortable with Donald Trump coming back. In short, with his dance card already full with matters foreign and domestic, the return of Netanyahu, let alone tied to an extremist right wing coalition partner likely to roil the already tense situation with Palestinians – is something Biden surely didn’t want or need.

The Stability of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea: Evidence from the 2000 Intifada Abrupt Genocide

In light of the demographic, technological, political and social changes that are quickly reaching tipping points that are stressing the balances between Jews, Jews, Israeli Arabs, Jews and Palestinians, you also know that it is a stable place to live in.

Neither the president nor the prime minister want to have a confrontation. The White House has a statement out. “We look forward to continuing to work with the Israeli government on our shared interests and values.” Both are far too busy with other matters to want such a problematic distraction.

The real reasons for this shift defy the conventional explanations. The violence of the second intifada in the early 2000s made many Jewish Israelis think negatively of peace with the Palestinians. Most of the time in the decade and a half that Mr. Netanyahu was Prime Minister, Israelis were not exposed to the consequences of their government’s policy of siege and occupation of the Gaza Strip. Support for a two-state solution practically evaporated, and the issue nearly disappeared from Israeli discourse.

Alas, though, just because the two-state concept is vanishing doesn’t mean the one-state solution — with Israel alone controlling the West Bank, Jerusalem and pre-1967 Israel forever — automatically becomes the easy default. Not at all. The more you examine closely how Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have been living together between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea the more you realize three important things:

The peace process has waned and the prospects of a two-state solution are dead, as well as the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the rampant use of social media. In the past year alone, roughly 20 Israelis and more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in violent incidents, according to an Israeli human rights group.