He will argue that the Israeli public has given him an unassailable mandate that trumps his indictment.
Gantz may rightly be afraid that, if he continues to refuse to sit with Netanyahu and pushes for a fourth election, he will be blamed by voters and his party may pay an even steeper price in the next round of voting. That may ultimately give Netanyahu the absolute parliamentary majority he needs.
There are dangers for Blue and White, whatever it decides. Its opposition to Netanyahu has been more personal than political, and a unity government could slowly void Gantz's party of purpose.
Blue and White, Netanyahu may hope, will eventually go the way of other short-lived secular right-wing parties that broke from Likud and donned a centre-right mantle, such as Ariel Sharon's Kadima and Tzipi Livni's Hatnua.
But even if Netanyahu can wriggle free of the straitjacket of electoral maths to which he has been captive for the past 12 months, he still needs to escape the sealed water tank: his imminent trial.
That may prove far trickier. His hope had been that with a majority in parliament, he could strike a triple blow against the legal and judicial systems.
The attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, would have to be removed, and Netanyahu's bloc could then pass French-style legislation providing him with legal immunity from prosecution while he was running the country.
In addition, he would intensify his assault on the Supreme Court, stripping it of oversight powers a long-held dream for the ultra-nationalist right, which sees the judiciary as placing a restraint, however minimal, on its freedom to expand settlements and annex parts of the West Bank.
But the price of an alliance with Blue and White, or sections of it, will probably be Netanyahu's submission to the trial and the court's judgment.
Yet, armed with an election win, Netanyahu and his supporters are quite capable of turning this moment into a constitutional crisis. They will try to frame it as a struggle between a democratically elected prime minister and an unelected, unaccountable, elitist and "leftist" Supreme Court trying to depose him.
As a Haaretz editorial opined, Netanyahu's victory will be presented as "a vote of no-confidence in the legal system, the police, the prosecution and the attorney general".
Bribes and smearsNetanyahu's dramatic turnaround in fortunes appears to have had several causes.
He had been given a forceful tailwind by US President Donald Trump's release in January of a so-called "peace plan" that promised Netanyahu's bloc almost everything it wanted: annexation of the most prized sections of the West Bank, leaving Palestinians with remnants that would be impossible to shape into a state.
More generally for Israelis keen to see the Palestinian issue disappear once and for all, Netanyahu suggested that he alone could harness the special relationship with Trump to make annexation a reality.
Netanyahu showered incentives on his ultra-nationalist allies to ensure they turned out in high numbers. That included promising new settlements in key Palestinian areas around East Jerusalem that until now had been a red line with the international community.
Netanyahu also relentlessly smeared Gantz. Many assumed the strategy would backfire, so transparent were Netanyahu's dirty tricks, but it looks to have paid off handsomely.
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