Netanyahu's main focus in this election wasn't winning (he knew that's a long shot). His plan is to make it impossible for opposition parties to form a Zionist coalition without the support of Arab parties In the best case scenario, the opposition can ONLY tolerate Ra'am's Mansour Abbas, but not the Arab Joint List (the opposition has many far-right figures & anti-Arab racists). This scenario would put the opposition at 59 seats, 2 seats short of a majority. The alternative would be a "center-right" unity government that includes Netanyahu & Naftali Bennet (& possibly Gadi Eisnkot) where Ben Gvir would be kicked out of the ruling coalition. Eisenkot's second in command, Yoram Cohen, already said he thinks their party, Yashar, could sit with the Likud and Smotrich, but they prefer not to sit with Ben-Gvir or under Netanyahu as prime minister. One obstacle here is the ultra-Orthodox exemption law; they demand to be exempted from military services while opposition parties campaigned on the promise of forcing the Heredim to serve. If the opposition can't figure out a way to form a viable government, there's the scenario of going to another election round (and then another, and another and another with no clear winner). That scenario also works well for Netanyahu.