At a dead-end road in a crime-hit town in central Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu stands on a mobile stage enclosed by a glass wall, pledging through a window to restore law and order as the crowd chants “Bibi the king.”
Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and the most dominant and polarising political figure of his generation is back on the campaign trail as Israelis prepare to vote on November 1 in their fifth national election in less than four years.
His Likud party is expected to win the largest bloc of seats in the Knesset. But with corruption charges hanging over him and criticism mounting over his links to a rapidly growing far-right party he may depend on to form a government, surveys predict there will be no knock-out victory.
For weeks, his “Bibi-bus” has been rolling through Likud strongholds across Israel as he seeks to drum up support from voters weary at the never-ending electoral deadlock that continues while the cost of living rises and security worries with Palestinian militants persist.
“Do you want to restore national pride? Reduce living costs? Restore personal safety?” a smiling Netanyahu asked the crowd. “I’m not a king. A king doesn’t get elected. I need to be elected and that depends on you.”
Netanyahu, a close ally of former US President Donald Trump, has mounted a relentless stream of criticism against centrist Prime Minister Yair Lapid, whose ruling coalition patched together after the last inconclusive election lasted but a year.
Read the article by Maayan Lubell in Perth Now and The Canberra Times.