<div style="text-align: justify; "><b><span style="font-size: 1rem;">With some young religious voters literally jumping for joy, the stand-out story of Israel's latest election was the big surge in popularity of the far-right.</span><br></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Things will be better now. When he's the public security minister, they'll be better still," Julian, an enthusiastic backer of firebrand politician Itamar Ben-Gvir told me at his campaign headquarters.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"He wants the best for Israel. He wants the terrorists out," said Noam from a settlement in the occupied West Bank. "We don't want the Arabs, they throw rocks at us and take our spots in Israel," he went on, before being hushed by a party activist.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While Mr Ben-Gvir - previously convicted as a racist in Israel - is now attempting to rebrand himself as a more conventional politician, he has not changed all his anti-Arab rhetoric.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It's time to be the landlords of this country again," he said after exit polls were published on Tuesday night.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">His cheering crowd in Jerusalem mostly kept to their new chant of "death to terrorists", adjusted from the one we often previously heard from his supporters - "death to Arabs".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Other journalists and I are used to covering Mr Ben-Gvir's provocative actions in bitterly contested occupied East Jerusalem. More than once I have seen him jubilantly leading ultra-nationalist marchers through a sensitive site for Palestinians in the Old City on Israel's Jerusalem Day.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Last month, he inflamed tensions in the flashpoint Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood by pointing a gun at Palestinians during clashes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now, as co-leader of the third biggest party, Religious Zionism, he hopes for a prominent cabinet position, overseeing the police.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One young female supporter of Mr Ben-Gvir's Oztma Yehudit (Jewish Power) faction, Tzori Elmakiyes, 17, from Jerusalem, said the results were "very gratifying", playing down critics' fears.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I don't think the opponents of Oztma Yehudit should be worried because at the end of the day the party's best interest are the people and the country of Israel."</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b>Stalemate ends</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">Speaking to his Likud party faithful, Benjamin Netanyahu smiled widely as he foresaw his comeback a year after he was dramatically ousted as prime minister by a broad coalition of his opponents.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The people want a government which projects "power, not weakness", he said, his voice hoarse from days of campaigning. He was answered with shouts of "King Bibi" - his fans using his nickname.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If, as expected, final election results confirm that the veteran leader can now build a stable majority government with his ultra-nationalist and ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies, this will also end nearly four years of an unprecedented political stalemate.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The country has been deeply split over the corruption charges for which Mr Netanyahu remains on trial. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing, accusing his opponents of a political witch-hunt.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This is a guy who doesn't give up, no matter how bad it looks and however much he was disgraced by leaving the prime minister's office," says pollster Mitchell Barak.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He suggests Mr Netanyahu benefitted from the passage of time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Those who wanted to punish him, punished him," he says, adding that they may have come to miss the "stability" that Mr Netanyahu believes he represented.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b>Left-wing decline</b></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There are still many Israelis with a different vision of the country.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Tel Aviv, there was a subdued mood overnight as the current caretaker Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, addressed his Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party, insisting that Israelis wanted politics "free of incitement and hatred".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, his experiment building an ideologically diverse coalition - made up of right-wing, centrist, left-wing and Arab parties - was ultimately short-lived.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">His tenure also saw the deadliest year for Israelis and Palestinians since 2015, amid an upsurge in violence. Yet his government continued to pay little attention to ways of solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That was disappointing for Haggai Mattar, editor of the progressive +972 Magazine.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These election results have also seen a further drop in support for Israel's left-wing parties.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Israelis on the left now need to take a moment to pause and think of how we've gotten to this state," Mr Mattar says despondently.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The left needs a reshuffle or rethink - new attitudes," he goes on. "But it might also be a terrible crash that we'll take a very long time to recover from."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But Anshel Pfeffer, a journalist for Haaretz newspaper, says the latest election only exposed what was already a clear trend.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There's an internal identity or culture war in Israel between what some people would see as the more liberal and open sides of Israeli society versus the more religious and extreme sides of Israeli and Jewish society," he observes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That's not really new but [Mr Netanyahu] has now really ramped that up for his own political purposes."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Netanyahu was able to harness a shift to the right that I have observed covering politics here for the last 10 years. And that seems to have accomplished his goal to get back in office.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But now that the ultra-nationalists have been empowered they may prove difficult to control. BBC</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>