Prime Minister ’s image of invincibility has taken a knock, Israeli analysts said on Wednesday, a day after the breakup of the large and broad coalition that had given him almost unprecedented power.
But for now, they said, his political future seemed assured for one simple reason: he has no obvious rival for the premiership.
“For the first time in Israeli political history, there is no prime minister material in the opposition,” said Efraim Inbar, a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.
Some politicians were smelling blood, however. Shelly Yacimovich, the leader of the much-diminished Labor Party, which sits in opposition, called a news conference and slammed Mr. Netanyahu for preferring his religious coalition partners over Kadima, the centrist party that quit the coalition only 70 days after joining it. The split resulted from irreconcilable differences over how to integrate ultra-Orthodox youths and men into the military and civilian service.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu has a vision,” she said. “This vision is called Benjamin Netanyahu.” She called for new elections as early as Nov. 27.
Most analysts said they thought that Mr. Netanyahu, whose term officially ends in October 2013, could hold off elections for a few more months. But the date does not make much difference, they said, so long as he remains peerless.
Mr. Netanyahu’s term has been largely quiet, with little domestic terrorism, and his finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, told Radio on Wednesday that the government had “protected Israel’s citizens from the global economic crisis.”
Mr. Netanyahu, of the conservative Likud Party, has pursued a cautious line.
When he was forming a government after the February 2009 elections, he turned to those he described as his “natural partners,” parties representing the Israeli right and the ultra-Orthodox. In recent months, even with the centrist Kadima in the government, he has done nothing to upset those constituencies, and Kadima’s short tenure in the coalition had no apparent impact on policy.
Instead, when the Supreme Court ordered the evacuation of five buildings housing 30 families in Ulpana, an offshoot of a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, because they were built on privately owned land, Mr. Netanyahu persuaded the residents to move out quietly by making an offer that their leaders could not refuse — a promise to build hundreds of additional settler homes.
And after the Supreme Court invalidated a law that exempted masses of ultra-Orthodox Jews engaged in religious studies from military service, on grounds that it was unconstitutional, Mr. Netanyahu determined to replace it with a law that would phase in a more equitable distribution of the burdens of citizenship while not overstepping the lines that his religious partners could tolerate.
Critics of Mr. Netanyahu say that he has chosen his and his party’s alliance with the religious parties over the interests of the country.
The fast-growing ultra-Orthodox population is an important political force because its voters are disciplined and tend to vote according to the instructions of rabbis.
But Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot and one of Israel’s most prominent political commentators, said in an interview that when it came to building governing coalitions, the religious parties would go with whoever promised to preserve their interests.
“The only alliance they have is with the Holy One, blessed be he,” he added.
The Israeli public, meanwhile, has been losing its faith in the political system. Voter turnout has declined over the years to about 65 percent in the 2009 elections, compared with figures closer to 80 percent through the 1990s, according to the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent research organization in Jerusalem.
Hundreds of thousands participated in protests for socioeconomic change last summer, and about 20,000 people took to the Tel Aviv streets this month to demand a broader draft and the ouster of politicians who opposed it. But enthusiasm for that issue could fade, analysts said.
“By the winter, there will be so many other issues,” said Shmuel Sandler, another professor who specializes in politics at Bar-Ilan University, adding that the military draft issue “is not going to be at the center.”
Peter Medding, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, listed Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria as just a few of the other factors that could present a challenge and affect the Israeli agenda.
No matter what, he said, Mr. Netanyahu was “perceived in the polls as the most suitable, the most capable” candidate for prime minister.
Neither Shaul Mofaz, the Kadima leader, nor Ms. Yacimovich of the Labor Party are considered to pose a serious threat to Mr. Netanyahu at this stage. Commentators have suggested that Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister who was acquitted last week of two major corruption charges, could eventually make a comeback and challenge Mr. Netanyahu if he were to unite all the centrist parties and forces.
But for now, Mr. Olmert is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of breach of trust in a third matter, and he remains embroiled in another serious corruption case, in which he is charged with taking bribes in connection with a real estate deal while he was the mayor of Jerusalem.
“Mr. Netanyahu is not popular in the popular sense of the word,” said Mr. Barnea, the columnist. “But he is accepted because he is the only prime minister around.”
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