Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won his fourth election in surprising fashion. He outdistanced the polls, including the exit polls in the waning hours of voting and won a decisive victory over the Zionist Union and Isaac Herzog. Here are some quick and initial takeaways from the results.

“Netanyahu gambled that even though economics were at the forefront of the campaign, people would not want to vote for the Zionist Union,”  Mitchell Plitnick, program director at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, told The Media Line. “He is still not popular among the right but he is still seen by most Israelis as the best of a bunch of bad choices.”

Bibi’s big gamble has paid off handsomely. Israel’s incumbent prime minister has confounded the pollsters with a resounding election win after a campaign where he pulled out all the stops: taking on the Obama administration with his anti-Iran speech before Congress, plus a last-minute pledge to never recognize a Palestinian state. We look at just how far to the right the next coalition government will be under a man who’s on track to become Israel’s longest serving leader.

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu securing reelection just a day after he vowed to block the establishment of a Palestinian state, many are pessimistic on the prospects for solving the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Palestinians.

“My entire adult life, American Jewish leaders have been telling Americans that Israel can save itself. Just wait until Israel gains a respite from terror, they said; then its silent, two-state majority will roar,” writes Peter Beinart. “Israel has been disproving that theory throughout the Netanyahu era. Now, with this election, Israel has killed it.”

“The center-left opposition had a stronger argument on security and peace than Netanyahu did, but it was afraid to make its case. Despite the unprecedented outpouring of anti-Netanyahu protest from retired defense and intelligence chiefs — including nearly every former head of the Mossad and Shin Bet and one-third of all living ex-generals — Herzog and his allies steered clear of them,” writes J. J. Goldberg.

The State Department said Wednesday that the US would “evaluate” its approach to the two-state solution in light of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of Palestinian statehood during his campaign for reelection.

With nearly all votes counted, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party is set to emerge as the election’s big winner with at least 30 seats. The Zionist Union trails behind with 24 seats. The Joint List of Arab parties is the third-largest party at this point, followed by Yesh Atid, Kulanu, Habayit Hayehudi, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Yisrael Beiteinu and Meretz.

A two-state solution to the Middle East conflict will be impossible to achieve with an Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Thursday.

Under most circumstances, an Israeli leader’s frank admission that he would never agree to a Palestinian state would be a disaster for the Palestinian leadership. But when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said precisely that in the heat of the recent election campaign, it seemed to have the opposite effect, validating the unilateral approach the Palestinians have decided to follow. “We will continue a diplomatic intifada. We have no other choice,” said Assad Abdul Rahman, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s central council and executive committee, its top decision-making body.

While Israel was headed to the polls, Palestinian, international and Israeli activists protested Israeli construction in the E1 area of the West Bank near Jerusalem.

Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli forces in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan late Wednesday following the takeover of a building by Jewish settlers, locals said.

Settlers uprooted over 60 olive trees in the central West Bank on Thursday, a Palestinian official said.

“The reconstruction of the Gaza Strip is not just a process of rebuilding houses; it should be national process to renovate the Palestinian political system completely and build bridges over the economic and psychological gaps between the political system and the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” writes Omar Shaban.