Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a tough dilemma ahead of the March 2 Knesset elections. One option is to launch an all-out, no-holds-barred war against the country’s legal system, trampling what few red lines are still intact. The other is to abandon the militant, anarchistic line he has adopted, desist from all attacks on law enforcers and revert to a dignified, statesmanlike course, underscoring his many achievements as prime minister, his unprecedented international standing and great experience in navigating the ship of state. Netanyahu is finding it hard to decide which of the options to choose.

Netanyahu will soon find himself facing a T-junction, a starkly decisive moment. This will likely be Netanyahu’s final election campaign, and perhaps his most important one. He is under heavy pressure from two different directions. His family and associates think he should take off the gloves and opt for a full-steam-ahead campaign claiming his innocence, in the hopes that the masses of Likud party supporters who stayed home on Election Day in September will rush to support the leader March 2 and save him from jail. A different kind of pressure is being exerted by senior Likud figures and his strategic advisers who are openly deterred by the continued storming of the state’s national institutions and the crushing of its regulators and gatekeepers. “That issue has been played out,” one of Netanyahu’s shadow advisers told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “It was not successful last time and will be even less so next time. Netanyahu has plenty to show and boast of, his continued storming of the state’s institutions will put off voters rather than draw them closer.”

Conventional wisdom has it that if it were only up to Netanyahu, he would be leaning for a dignified course of action. The problem is that he does not call all the shots. Netanyahu is under the daily influence of his family, and especially his son Yair, who is leading an aggressive and often unrestrained line against law enforcement authorities, the media and even opponents from within the Likud party such as Gideon Saar, who has challenged Netanyahu for the party leadership. Netanyahu’s dilemma is clearly reflected in interviews by his various spokespeople, and sometimes two contradictory strategies can be discerned in a single interview. For example, the confrontational justice minister Netanyahu named to his caretaker government, Amir Ohana, tries to come off sounding relatively dignified and to modify his harsh criticism of law enforcement authorities, but then goes on to lose all restraint and resume his attacks on the attorney general and senior state prosecutors. The same thing happens with other Netanyahu associates. For now, the Netanyahu campaign mainly seems confused.

Netanyahu himself has been commissioning a growing number of in-depth surveys, using the results to calculate his prospects of garnering a 61-seat Knesset majority according to each of the two possible strategies. A few of his advisers have already informed him that they would not take part in yet another storming of the state’s legal and law enforcement bastions. Several advisers have presented him with samples of the two possible campaign directions. Netanyahu knows full well that opting for the militant line will not move a single voter over from the opposing bloc to his side. He hopes such a campaign would bring back most of the Likudniks who abandoned him last time, whether by abstaining or voting for other parties. The question is whether this will suffice. Netanyahu believes it will. If all the mergers Netanyahu is pushing for among the various parties to the right of the Likud materialize, and the right-wing bloc does not waste any votes, there is a good chance that the return of pro-Netanyahu voters would provide him with the impetus he needs to cross the 61-seat hurdle and form a majority coalition.