It appears incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will remain in office and preside over the 20th Israeli Knesset.

Exit poll data taken from Tuesday’s national election sees Netanyahu’s Likud Party holding steady with archrival, the Zionist Union, headed by opposition leader Isaac Herzog. Even though their parties received the same number of mandates (27), political commentators see Netanyahu as having a better chance to put together a coalition government than his rival. [UPDATE: With 99 percent of the vote now counted, Likud has won 30 mandates, while the Zionist Union has only 24, making the election a further swing to the right.]

Official voting data will be released on Thursday, after which the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, will presumably invite Netanyahu to be the first to attempt to form a coalition government. Netanyahu will have 42 days to work with the other elected parties to muster the 61 votes necessary to form a government.

Opinion polls leading up to Tuesday’s election had Likud trailing the Zionist Union by a few seats. In response, Netanyahu fired up his rhetoric, appealing to right-wing voters to back him instead of rival conservatives.

The most potent promise came when Netanyahu boldly asserted that his government would never accept a Palestinian state side by side with Israel.

“I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the State of Israel,” he said Monday in a video interview published on nrg. “There is a real threat here that a left-wing government will join the international community and follow its orders.”

This unequivocal rejection of the idea of a Palestinian state obliterates the international community’s pretext for a formal peace process between Israelis and the Palestinians. Thus, under Netanyahu, the peace process is unlikely to move forward while he remains in office.

As proven by his three terms in office, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been ready to accommodate U.S. peace brokers with confidence-building measures such as the 10-month settlement construction freeze in 2010. However, these measures were not met with any Palestinian reciprocation. Thus a hardened Netanyahu looks to have all but given up on the idea of a two-state solution.

Contrary to Netanyahu, rival election hopeful Isaac Herzog was not only ready to head into negations toward the creation of a Palestinian state, but in the past was ready to gift East Jerusalem to the Palestinians as well.

According to Israel Hayom, “Herzog, who now vows to protect Jerusalem’s ‘strength,’ made it clear after he was elected as Labor chairman (in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth) that he sees Jerusalem serving as two political capitals—the capital of the Jewish state on its west, and the capital of the Palestinian state on its east.”

Netanyahu’s promise to not create a Palestinian state is likely to do more than ruffle a few feathers in Washington and Brussels. Until recently, it has been the United States’ historic position to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations Security Council. This has traditionally toned down some of the international pressure against Israel to cave in to Palestinian demands. Now, it’s likely the Obama administration will do away with its traditional stance.

No doubt, Netanyahu realized his preelection promise would result in further disintegration of relations between Israel and the Obama administration. However, he was willing to take that risk to ensure he captured the votes necessary to win the election. Plus, with only two more years of President Barack Obama’s presidency, and a majority Republican base supportive of Israel inside the United States Congress, Netanyahu believes the current rift will be able to be healed, once a new president comes into power.

However, it is possible that Netanyahu has underestimated the damage that the next two years of anti-Israel policy will do. If commentators thought the last six years of relations between the U.S. and Israel were bad, the next two will be worse. It’s possible that the next two years will see the complete disintegration of the brotherhood between Israel and the United States.

Netanyahu’s stance against the establishment of a Palestinian state is something the Trumpet has expected from his government, and it will eventually lead to the most positive outcome for Jews and Palestinians.

Based on a prophecy in Zechariah, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has long forecast that only a conservative Israeli government, intent on not dividing the city of Jerusalem, will be able to move Bible prophecy forward.

In 2006, Gerald Flurry wrote, “Palestinians ‘resolve’ by taking East Jerusalem by force. That is why I believe the conservatives could regain control in Israel. They have a stronger will to fight for the land they believe belongs to them.”

Netanyahu’s toughened preelection stance puts the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy within reach. With another four years in office likely for the prime minister, all eyes should be on Jerusalem.