The Prime Minister has long dismissed allegations of personal corruption against him and his family as part of a conspiracy by top police,the judiciary and “the Left” to remove him from power by non-electoral means. His dominance of the electoral landscape was underlined by day’s end:after hours of talks,an exasperated Rivlin had no choice but to offer Netanyahu thefirst opportunity to form a coalition.

Why is this important?

In the year that Netanyahu entered the Knesset as a member of the right-wing Likud party,another Israeli with strong personal ties to the US was being removed:the far-right rabbi Meir Kahane and his party,Kach,were deemed too racist to stand for re-election (and designated a terrorist organisation by Washington). But though Kahane was banned from office in 1988 and assassinated in 1990,those who had elected him remained. In the ensuing years,through other small parties of the far right and religious right,they wouldgive Likud the numbers for government. In return,Netanyahu would give their politics an internationally acceptable face.

This relationship moved the national consensus in Israel further and further to the right. When he became prime minister for the first time in 1996,Netanyahu would inherit the Oslo Accords,which tentatively proposed a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on “land for peace”. While unable to entirely repudiate an agreement bearing Washington’s seal,he and his American supporters graduallypushed it into the background,preferring instead the formula “peace for peace”;Israel would fortify its position until both the region’s states and the stateless Palestinians accepted its stances on settlement of occupied territory and a final peace as immovable. This was a vision asold as Revisionist Zionism itself.

For many years,and especially after the terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11,2001,it was a vision with bipartisan support in the US. But Netanyahu has found himself increasingly at odds with Democratic presidents and increasingly dependent on the religious right in America,culminating in hisenthusiastic embrace of Donald Trump and the Abraham Accords,which formalised relations witha number of Arab regimes while placing the Palestinian question to one side.

What happens next?

While Netanyahu’s various trials for fraud and breach of trust - which include allegations that he and his family received gifts linked to corruption fromAustralian billionaire James Packer - look set to run for months or even years,they are as unlikely to shift the political dial as Trump’s impeachment trials in the US:

The election of US President Joe Biden and his apparent determination toresurrect the Iran nuclear deal - which Netanyahu hasvehemently opposed - could prove more significant in persuading Israelis that their prime minister since 2009 has become a liability. Yet who might replace him? Even his leading rivals on the right -Avigdor Lieberman andNaftali Bennett - cut their political teeth as chiefs of staff to Netanyahu before forming their own parties. Beyond the right,there is no figure with the national stature to shape a new Israeli consensus.

In 2012 Martin Indyk - an Australian who served as a senior US diplomat under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama -told me that “there’s a strong constraint against any American president … that wants to try to do something to move Israel in a direction that would involve pressure”. So long as that remains true,Benjamin Netanyahu will have room for political manoeuvre. In the last 25 years no one has matched his ability to use it.