RUTHFULLY YOURS

In January 1997, during his first term as prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu agreed to withdraw from 80% of Hebron, smothering the city’s tiny Jewish enclave. The following year, with President Clinton mired in the Lewinsky affair, Mr. Netanyahu was maneuvered into the Wye River Memorandum with Yasser Arafat, relinquishing further Israeli territorial control.

During parliamentary debate in 2004 over the Gaza disengagement, which uprooted 10,000 Jews, Mr. Netanyahu voted repeatedly in favor of withdrawal and refused to exercise his leverage as finance minister on a crucial budget vote that would have stalled the Gaza exit. His just-for-the-record resignation from the cabinet, a week before the withdrawal, was irrelevant.

In his 2009 address at Bar Ilan University, soon after President Obama lacerated Israel in his Cairo speech, Mr. Netanyahu paid lip service to a two-state solution. Later that year, again bowing to pressure from Mr. Obama, he implemented a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction, which he relaxed only slightly when the freeze expired.

Only during Mr. Netanyahu’s third term, beginning in 2013, did he develop the political stamina and fortitude to confront the world’s leaders as equals—standing tall against Mr. Obama and the nuclear deal with Iran. Hardening on Palestinian negotiations, Mr. Netanyahu now hammered home at every opportunity recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people as a precondition to negotiations. He knew that for the Palestinians, acceptance would complicate their cardinal “right of return.”

Since then, with the Israeli right behind him and open lines to Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Mr. Netanyahu has emerged as the world’s premier statesman, able to mesmerize audiences in polished English and Hebrew.

Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu have worked hand in glove. Mr. Netanyahu set the stage for U.S. withdrawal from the Iran deal by presenting damning evidence from Tehran’s nuclear archives. Mr. Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Israel’s capital. Then Mr. Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and didn’t flinch when Mr. Netanyahu said he would annex part of the West Bank. These two election-eve gifts sealed the Netanyahu victory.

Is Mr. Netanyahu now truly in tune with the Israeli right, which continues to view him with suspicion? The litmus test will be how swiftly he eases restrictions on the expansion of Jewish towns on the West Bank, and particularly on Hebron’s Jewish enclave.

Hebron, where King David reigned before moving to Jerusalem, is the site of the Tomb of the Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—and their wives Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. In the Arab massacres of 1929 and 1936, Jews were forced to abandon property that they should have been allowed to reclaim after Israel gained control of Hebron in 1967. But wanting to maintain the status quo, a timid Israeli government and Supreme Court have allowed only a skeletal Jewish community of some 1,000, surrounded today by 200,000 Palestinian Arabs. The Israeli right is waiting to see if Mr. Netanyahu, backed by a compliant coalition and Mr. Trump’s safety net, will exploit the current window of opportunity and allow more Jews to return to Judaism’s second-holiest city.

The April election sharpened the Israeli political divide. The left coalesces around socialist values, separation of religion and state, and territorial compromise. The right disagrees over army exemptions for religious students, school curricula, housing for young couples, and how far to go to tame Gaza, but it unites on resettling the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, as Israel officially calls the West Bank.

The possibility of a complete Israeli withdrawal from that territory has long faded from public discussion, except from the most radical factions in Israel—the Arab parties and the left-wing Meretz party. But since the Palestinians insist on a complete withdrawal, they’ve boxed themselves into all-or-nothing, and they’ve ended up with nothing.

Israelis on the right all sign on to the notion of resettling the land. But a substantial portion see it as a messianic mandate. Visions of resettling biblical lands appear repeatedly in biblical verses. God’s prophecy to Jeremiah, “And your sons shall return to their borders,” fast became a mantra of the settlers, set to song for contemporary impact.

Immediately after the 1967 war, before the politics hardened, Israelis of all stripes flocked to the West Bank in tour buses, enthralled to visit lands that jumped out of Bible pages—Hebron, Shechem, Bethlehem. “The liberated lands,” they called them. They stopped to buy peaches, watermelons and tomatoes from Arab vendors eager to cash in on an unanticipated bonanza. A resettlement movement called Gush Emunim, or Bloc of the Faithful, emerged to provide religious and political direction on what to do with this unanticipated territorial windfall. The socialist Labor Party, an unlikely partner caught up in the fervor, approved the first settlements.

Rabbi Chaim Druckman, one of Gush Emunim’s founders and a former Knesset member, argued poignantly that a crucial part of the destiny of the Jewish people is control over the biblical Land of Israel. Only when Jews populated their ancient space, he said, did the land give forth its bounty—agriculturally and intellectually. With endless political bumps along the way, Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria now exceed 400,000, an immovable mass.

A major obstacle threatening Mr. Netanyahu’s ability to advance Jewish destiny is legal: charges of bribery, breach of trust and fraud. Formal charges await a hearing to be held by mid-July, and efforts are afloat to grant the prime minister parliamentary immunity. Regardless, any final resolution will take at least two years, affording ample time for Mr. Netanyahu to put his stamp on the future.

Another possible complication is Mr. Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” now scheduled to be unveiled in early June. Enough information has seeped out from Trump special envoy Jason Greenblatt to signal that the peace plan does not include a Palestinian state. That has been sufficient for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to reject the deal out of hand.

If a two-state solution does surface, Mr. Netanyahu will have no choice but to challenge it, fragmenting his political energy. A deal without a two-state solution, on the other hand, will give Israel the green light to continue settling biblical lands.

Mr. Kolatch writes about Mr. Netanyahu’s early political years and his role in the Gaza disengagement in “At the Corner of Fact & Fancy.”