They are the unwitting infantry in Binyamin Netanyahu's army: men dressed in bright red overalls and matching baseball caps, and stationed at street corners, supermarkets and bus and train stations across Israel. At their feet are bundles of a brash tabloid newspaper, whose headlines trumpet unflinching support for Netanyahu and his government's policies. Their task is to transfer as many copies as possible into the hands of passers-by.

Israel Hayom -- owned by Sheldon Adelson, the US casino magnate who pumped millions into Mitt Romney's unsuccessful bid for the US presidency -- is the most widely read newspaper in the country and a significant factor in the Israeli leader's grip on power.

At 63, Netanyahu -- known to all as Bibi -- has just become the longest serving prime minister after David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the state. Following a largely unremarkable first spell in office, ending in 1999, he went back to the world of business but never lost his hunger for the political front line. Now he is expected to continue in the top job after a general election on January 22: a recent straw poll of a dozen random Jerusalemites failed to find a single person who thought he could be defeated.

The lack of a credible challenger is one reason why Netanyahu called an election nine months before the scheduled end of his four-and-a-half year term. (This, in itself is remarkable: from shaky and short-lived coalitions lasting a year or two, Israel has moved to something akin to political stability.) There was no crisis necessitating an election and Netanyahu's opinion poll ratings suggested that he could have sailed comfortably on until next October. Instead he opted to capitalize on the disarray of his opponents, striking before they could get their act together.

And, while the centre and centre-left was still considering how best to challenge Netanyahu, he surprised almost everyone by announcing an alliance of the Right. His party, Likud, has joined forces with Yisrael Beiteinu, a party even further along Israel's rightward-tilting political spectrum, whose leader, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, is viewed with distaste by many Western diplomats for his uncompromising views -- he recently compared the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. The alliance pretty much ensures that Netanyahu will be first in line when it comes to forming a new coalition.

A re-elected Netanyahu will find himself face to face with a re-elected President Obama, back on their familiar sparring ground of Iran, the issue that has chilled relations over the past year.

Bibi intends Iran to be the defining issue of his premiership. He sees the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme, and its unremitting hostility to Israel, as an existential threat to the Jewish state. 'Bibi views his place in history as defending the Jewish homeland against the Iranians, who are the modern-day Hitler,' a senior Western diplomat told me recently. Ben-Gurion created the state of Israel; Netanyahu sees himself as its saviour.

For this, he has been described as messianic, a mythomaniac and a megalomaniac. His former intelligence chief, Yuval Diskin, said earlier this year that the Israeli political leadership made decisions 'based on messianic feelings'. David Grossman, one of Israel's most celebrated novelists, has also warned of Netanyahu's 'megalomaniacal' vision regarding the Iranian threat. Israeli political philosopher Avishai Margalit told David Remnick of The New Yorker that the prime minister was a 'mythomaniac', defined by Remnick as 'a politician utterly absorbed and guided by his sense of heroic mission, and dismissive of the opinions and analyses of even his closest advisers'.

Israel's defence and security establishments are known to have cautioned against a unilateral strike against Iran. Seven out of 10 Israelis oppose military action unless the US is on board, according to opinion polls. Even the fervour for military action of Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Bibi's right-hand man, has cooled in the face of US resistance. Netanyahu -- always a loner, with few true friends and allies -- appears to be isolated on his defining issue.

Paradoxically, on other key matters, Netanyahu has a record of being cautious -- even weak, according to critics. He has dug in over the so-called peace process with the Palestinians, played safe on the economy and avoided confrontation with ultra-Orthodox Jews over their exemption from military service.

That could change. As with Obama, the key question of a second term is what to do with it. If Netanyahu decides that boldness should override caution in 2013, Israel -- and potentially the world -- could be in for an unpredictable ride. But first, there is an election that needs to be clinched. And the men in red overalls will be playing their part.

 

Harriet Sherwood is Jerusalem Correspondent of The Guardian

 

 

 

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