Israel's voters can also look forward to an emboldened Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel movement, which will no doubt pick up supporters as a result of Netanyahu's reelection. Then there is the allegation of Israeli war crimes now being considered by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Bibi's return to power will ensure that this process continues, possibly resulting in indictments against a significant proportion of the Israeli chain of command, including the reelected Benjamin Netanyahu.
Finally, many Israelis can expect to stay poor under Netanyahu's free market policies.
Part III -- Consequences for the Palestinians
In the near run things may not change much for the Palestinians. With Netanyahu reelected, any Israeli talk of compromise, if it is articulated at all, will be recognized as empty propaganda. We can speculate that if Likud's strongest rival, the Zionist Union headed by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, had won the recent election, they would perhaps have muddied the waters for the Palestinians -- perhaps reopening "negotiations" with Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian National Authority, probably then causing the latter to put on hold Palestinian charges of Israeli war crimes at the ICC, and then tempting the aging Abbas with some form of Bantustan. That is the very best the Palestinians could have gotten from any Zionist government. It is realization of this hard fact that many Palestinians and their supporters would rather see Netanyahu in charge: the issues then at least remain crystal clear rather than fogged over by false hopes.
On the bright side of the equation the united Arab List did very well in the recent election and garnered 14 seats. This makes the Israeli Arab coalition the third largest bloc in the Knesset and thus a potential major opposition voice. Arab Israeli leaders will now demand seats on parliamentary committees. They will almost certainly be ignored or, at best, relegated to unimportant places. This will only disillusion many Arab Israelis about politics in general and cause them to look for other avenues to express their longstanding dissatisfaction. For the rest of the world, their poor treatment will become more obvious and Israel's claim to democratic status all the less persuasive.
Part IV -- Consequences for the United States
The sad truth is that the present leaders of the mainstream Jewish community in the U.S. have long favored the Likud leadership in Israel. Some of these Jewish leaders believe that tough-minded Likudniks are the best hedge against the "inevitable" next Holocaust, while others will back whoever is in charge because they are ideologically fixated on Israel as their cause celebre. Thus, all of them are no doubt pleased with Netanyahu's return to power. This is also the case for the U.S.'s Christian Zionists who are motivated by religious delusions about what it takes to bring about the Second Coming of their preferred god. It is a mistake to see these attitudes as generational. In both cases they will be with us for a long time. For all these people, Netanyahu's reelection means business as usual.
The consequences of Netanyahu's victory for liberal American Jews and their organizations -- J Street, the American branch of Peace Now, and the like -- is really problematic. If they can hold onto their membership, they might press on despite all. On the other hand, many liberal Jews might just give up and become quiet, which of course is what the hard-line Zionists want. But it is also likely that liberal Zionist organizations will lose members to more relevant and outspoken organizations such as Jewish Voices For Peace. That would be a move in a progressive, and realistic, direction.
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