Is time up for King Bibi?

In the run-up to its fourth election in two years, Israel is enjoying its vaccine success story. The number of seriously ill Covid patients is in decline, the R rate is slowly falling and the economy has started to reopen. But prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not reaping the rewards.

Support for Netanyahu’s party, Likud, although still the largest, has shrunk significantly since the last elections where it won 36 seats. Blue and White, which won 33 seats, has since crashed and burnt due to brilliant political manoeuvring by Bibi (and a staggering lack of political sophistication by leader Benny Gantz). Yet Likud is expected to only win 30 seats in this week’s snap election.

For Bibi, the vaccination programme has been a double-edged sword. It has been rapid and widespread, but uptake among the ultra-Orthodox and Israeli Arab communities has been much lower than in the general population. Combined with looser rule keeping, these groups still have higher infections rates relative to the rest of the population.