It’s no wonder Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not even try to hide his disappointment at Hassan Rouhani’s victory in Iran’s presidential elections.

The replacement of “the modern-day Hitler,” as he had described [outgoing Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad on one of his visits to the United States (2008), with a leader considered moderate and pragmatic, has shuffled his deck of “advocacy” cards and left him without a joker. The prime minister will be hard pressed from now on to frighten the Israeli public with “a second Holocaust” and thus deflect its attention from the Palestinian problem. 

And apropos the Palestinian issue, Netanyahu has another reason to be disappointed. The annual public opinion poll commissioned by Ariel University in the settlement-turned-city of Ariel, was headlined: “The Israeli public is becoming more pragmatic and veering to the left.” The poll, conducted by polling agency Maagar Mochot in the second half of May among a sampling of the adult Jewish population living within the Green Line, indicates that the right wing has lost its majority.

For the first time, the percentage of those defining themselves as “right wing” has declined from 57% in 2012 to 48% this year. In contrast, the percentage of those defining themselves as “political center” or “left wing” rose from 43% to 52%.