He hoped for a low-turn-out among the Palestinian minority - and conversely a strong showing by Likud voters - so that Palestinian parties could not bolster his Jewish opponents in the parliament. Falling turnout had been the long-term trend among Palestinian citizens, with barely half voting in the 2009 election that began Netanyahu's current consecutive governments.
But the incitement efforts largely backfired, stirring the Palestinian minority to turn out in record numbers this March and rallying their support overwhelmingly to the Joint List rather than more moderate Jewish parties.
But more successfully, Netanyahu has also sought to make the idea of allying with the Joint List so toxic that no rival Jewish party would dare to consider it.
In part because of this, Benny Gantz, a former army general who became leader of the center-right Blue and White party, Israel's version of a "resistance" party to Netanyahu, threw in his hand and joined the Netanyahu government following the inconclusive results of March's election rather than work with the Joint List.
In return, he is supposed to become alternate prime minister late next year, though few - including apparently Gantz - think Netanyahu will honor such a handover.
The current wave of mass protests by Israeli Jews against Netanyahu, which have been growing weekly despite fears of the pandemic, reflect the sense of many, especially among Gantz's supporters, that they have been politically abandoned.
Submarines affairThe issue chiefly driving protesters to the streets is not the boxes of cigars and pink champagne Netanyahu and his wife are accused of treating as bribes from rich businessmen. Nor is it the pressure Netanyahu is alleged to have exerted on media organizations to garner himself better coverage.
What really incenses them is the thought that he played fast and loose with - and possibly profited from - the national security of Israel, in what has become known as the submarines affair.
Evidence has amassed that Netanyahu's government purchased three submarines and four ships from a German firm in defiance of advice from the military. The attorney general, however, appears to have balked at adding yet another indictment to the charge sheet.
It was precisely over the matter of the submarines deal that the budding romance between Netanyahu and Abbas was cemented last month.
Yariv Levin, speaker of the parliament and Netanyahu's righthand man, appears to have pressured Abbas, a deputy speaker, into voiding a parliamentary vote Abbas oversaw that narrowly approved a commission of inquiry into the submarines affair. That would have proved disastrous for Netanyahu.
In return, the prime minister appears to have offered Abbas a series of favors.
That has included Netanyahu's unprecedented appearance last week via Zoom at a meeting of a special parliamentary committee headed by Abbas on tackling the current crime wave in Palestinian communities in Israel.
Netanyahu's attendance at an obscure committee is unheard of. But his sudden interest in the rocketing number of criminal murders among Israel's Palestinian minority was hard to swallow. He helped to create the economic and social conditions that have fueled the crime wave, and he has done almost nothing to address the lack of policing that turned Palestinian communities into lawless zones.
'Peace dividend'?Abbas, however, hopes to leverage his ties with Netanyahu to his own political benefit, despite deeply antagonizing the rest of the Joint List by doing so.
Netanyahu has publicly argued that Palestinian citizens will feel a peace dividend from Israel's warming ties to Arab states such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. He recently told the media: "This revolution that we are carrying out outside of the State of Israel's borders, we must also carry out within the State of Israel's borders."
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