Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gambled that if he could stoke enough fear among voters, he could be re-elected – and he won. Now he needs to offer voters something more.

In the final stages of the campaign, Netanyahu described a high turnout for Israel’s 20 percent Arab minority as a threat; abandoned even lip service to the two-state solution; and jeopardized decades of bipartisan support for Israel in the U.S. by taking sides with Republicans in their efforts to undermine a Democratic president’s nuclear talks with Iran.

Netanyahu is likely to emerge as the prime minister of the next government, and there are some things it is already clear he should do.

The first is to explain, given his rejection of a two-state solution for Israel and its Palestinian occupied territories, what exactly his plan is. Without some kind of vision for the peaceful resolution of the Palestinian question, an escalation of violence is inevitable.

Netanyahu must also reach out to Israel’s Arab citizens. Their enthusiastic participation in the democratic process is perhaps the most positive outcome of this election. No matter what their beliefs or politics, Arab voters are crucial to Israel’s identity as a democracy.

Finally, Netanyahu needs to repair broken ties with the U.S. He may calculate that President Obama, with whom he shares a mutual dislike, will be out of office in less than two years. Yet even a year can be a long time in such an unstable region. Nor is there any guarantee the next U.S. president will see eye to eye with Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has, not for the first time, demonstrated his gifts as a politician. Now he must call on those talents to win all Israelis’ support for a more hopeful vision of their nation’s future.


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