Perhaps most importantly of all, Netanyahu simply wore down the resistance of an electorate tired of repeated elections.
Gantz's main problem was that he had no real hope of forming a government without the help of the Palestinian parties in the Joint List. A vote for Gantz simply prevented Netanyahu from winning. It couldn't end the year-long stalemate.
Faced with the likelihood of a fourth election, a section of Gantz's supporters appear to have given up on their dislike of Netanyahu and returned to his Likud party.
Anger at land swapsOvershadowed by the main drama between Netanyahu and Gantz, the other significant election story was a surge of support for the Joint List, the faction representing Israel's large Palestinian minority.
If they win 15 seats, as currently predicted, it will be their highest representation in parliament ever and two more legislators than they won in September. They are now the third-largest party by some margin.
Although it is too early to know for sure why the turnout for the List has jumped, there are three likely explanations.
One is that Palestinian citizens, a fifth of Israel's population, appear to feel for the first time that their vote matters or at least that it needs to matter.
In April last year, in the first election of the current cycle, less than half of the minority's voters turned out, winning the List 10 seats. This time it is likely that some two-thirds cast a ballot.
In part, that relates to the Trump plan, which promotes an ambition harboured by the Netanyahu-led right for so-called "land swaps". These would allow Israel to annex the settlements, and in return a quarter of a million Palestinians would be stripped of their Israeli citizenship and assigned to the patchwork Palestinian "state-in-waiting".
This threat ethnic cleansing by sleight of hand almost certainly riled many Palestinian citizens who had previously boycotted the elections or were too disillusioned to turn out. They wanted to show that their citizenship cannot be discounted, neither by Trump nor Netanyahu.
Newfound powerBut the upturn for the Joint List predates the Trump plan. In September, the minority's turnout climbed to nearly 60 percent.
Until recently and certainly since the eruption of the Second Intifada 20 years ago there had been a sense that Israeli politics was an exclusively Jewish affair. The Zionist majority were agreed on the political fundamentals, and Palestinian citizens believed they could make no difference. Their voice was entirely irrelevant.
But the last three elections have suggested a slightly different lesson. True, the minority is still mostly not heard. In fact, Netanyahu's opponents both in Gantz's Blue and White and in a new Labor-led coalition actively distanced themselves from the Joint List, as Netanyahu bated them that it would be dangerous to rely on "Arab" legislators to rule.
What the three elections proved instead is that, through their votes, the minority could block Netanyahu's path to power and thereby inflict revenge for his constant incitement against them and their representatives as traitors and the enemy of a Jewish state.
Indeed, had the turnout by Palestinian citizens been significantly lower, Netanyahu would probably have secured the 61 seats he needed.
It was precisely his fear of Palestinians voting that led Netanyahu to tone down his incitement against the minority during the final stages of the campaign. Previous remarks, such as that "Arabs want to annihilate us all women, children and men" backfired in the last election in September, driving up the minority's turnout.
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