Netanyahu goes into the winter session in fantastic shape. He holds all the cards

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Binyamin Netanyahu went from the heights to the depths this week: from Trump showering him with praises, making him feel like a chassan at his sheva brachos, blushing endlessly from the compliments — to this Monday’s opening of the Knesset winter session, with its routine verbal blows, curses, and insults.

For Bibi, the two extremes present no contradiction. As he once told me, to survive at the top means being able to come back down to earth, get one’s hands dirty, and fix things, when the situation calls for it — and then go back to dealing with global affairs.

Netanyahu goes into the winter session in fantastic shape. He holds all the cards. Had he wanted to, he could have called for elections immediately after President Trump’s visit.

But Bibi had other goals. Maintaining the coalition, in his view, remains the supreme value. Heading to elections against the backdrop of the war’s end and ongoing diplomatic talks to expand the Abraham Accords and the circle of peace is still, from his perspective, the less desirable alternative.

If elections are held in November 2026, it will be the longest of Netanyahu’s six terms in office — indeed, one of the longest in Knesset history. Although there would be symbolic value in this, it’s not a priority for Bibi. Instead, he takes the pragmatic view of elections in the second half of 2026, in the meantime seeking to expand the Abraham Accords and stabilize the regional front.

As someone who reads the polls closely, he sees a promising trend for the right — especially for Likud under his leadership — and ill tidings for his rivals, particularly Naftali Bennett, who was Bibi’s leading challenger in polls, expected to lead a centrist party that would compete with Likud for the same voter base.

Netanyahu is counting on time to do the work for him — that Bennett, as he has in all his previous campaigns, will once again fade away, collapsing from high poll numbers to low vote counts. Even when he forced his way into the premiership, Bennett had barely passed the electoral threshold.

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Since Netanyahu’s return from Washington, his internal polls show an interesting trend: His right-wing bloc is flirting with 60 mandates. The number of undecideds, contrary to some trends seen in mainstream polls, isn’t especially large once you slice the data by right-wing and left-wing voters. The next election will rise or fall on turnout.

If right-wing voters are feeling fearful and defeated, while left-wing voters pour into the streets in force — as Witkoff and Kushner saw in Hostages Square — then we can predict the likely defeat of the right bloc.

In the lead-up to elections, Netanyahu will try to do everything he can to ensure that right-wing voters flock to the ballot boxes. To do that, Bibi needs to project a message of strength. National, and not necessarily Jewish….

After Trump’s visit, returning to full-scale war is Bibi’s last resort — not just because of the American president, who for the first time said “don’t” since the start of his second term, but also because the Israeli public is fed up with the continuing fighting. That includes even the right wing, according to all the polls.

A message of restored deterrence, diplomatic agreements that don’t cede territory, and strengthening ties with Trump will signal to right-wing voters that they have every reason to go and vote “only Bibi.”

“The war will end when all the hostages return, including the fallen,” Bibi said this week, and not only because of Trump’s pressure but also out of Israeli national interest, Bibi will do everything in his power to ensure that the return of the fallen is achieved by diplomatic and political means rather than by military action.

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Peace in the Mideast begins at home. Netanyahu wants to stabilize his government with the opening of the Knesset’s winter session this week in order to give himself diplomatic room to maneuver — and this, of course, is where the draft law comes into play.

The chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Boaz Bismuth, who met with the chareidi Knesset members on the committee during Chol Hamoed, went on a short vacation at the end of the week after Yom Tov — and perhaps that’s for the best, as he was spared the headlines about a “surrender to the chareidim.”

On the eve of his departure, the impression among the MKs involved in the negotiations was that a mutually agreed-upon outline was within reach. But here, it should be noted with caution that this was exactly the same sense of progress that prevailed with the previous committee chair right before the Twelve-Day War.

On the chareidi side — among Shas and Degel HaTorah, joined by parts of the divided Agudas Yisrael — there’s a preference for keeping silent and trying to restore the understandings reached with Yuli Edelstein on the eve of the Iranian strike. Although the committee’s legal advisor, Miri Frenkel-Shor, had then given her blessing to the outline, her current position is ambiguous.

As long as the committee’s legal advisor does not join the opposition front led by the attorney general, Likud representatives and their chareidi partners will do everything they can to keep her in the picture and preserve her dignity.

It seems that Bismuth’s words and heart are aligned, as the message he conveys — not only to the chareidim — reflects a willingness to go all the way and pass the legislation, even if it’s his final political act, as he has said.

Does Netanyahu himself want to pass a draft law? That’s a question to which, as with all of Netanyahu’s plans, there’s never been a clear answer.

But there are telltale signs — mainly from the conversations Netanyahu has held over the past week with right-wing factions, details of which have leaked to his chareidi partners — in which he speaks of a law that will “restore honor to the right,” allowing thousands of chareidim to be drafted on one hand, while preserving the status of Torah scholars on the other.

Netanyahu believes that if elections take place within ten months, and in the meantime the public sees thousands of chareidim reporting to the recruitment office, the “draft-dodging law” campaign will fizzle out on its own.

Here one must also take into account the internal Agudas Yisrael front led by the Gur chassidic faction, for whom the draft law seems to be one more facet of their ultimate goal — bringing down Netanyahu’s government. The “Anyone But Bibi” movement, it turns out, has found its way even into some chareidi circles.

Within Agudas Yisrael’s central faction, there is neither faith nor trust in the prime minister. His relationships with Shas, Degel HaTorah, and with Shlomei Emunim and Belz are a different story altogether.

Netanyahu is talking about Shas’s formal return to the government with the opening of the winter session on October 20, after a draft law outline is placed on the table of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee — even before the legislation passes its three readings in the Knesset plenum.

For the yeshivah students beginning the winter zeman this weekend, one can only hope that Netanyahu will succeed not only in keeping his promises to reshape the face of the Middle East — but also in the one and only promise he made to the chareidim three years ago.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1083)