Sometimes when they're closing in, you just gotta call "Election Fraud."

Benjamin Netanyahu is taking a page out of Donald Trump's post-election playbook. 

Benjamin Netanyahu has said a newly formed Israeli coalition that is poised to unseat him as prime minister was the result of “the greatest election fraud” in the history of democracy.

Netanyahu focused his allegations on a broken campaign promise from the man set to replace him as prime minister, nationalist Naftali Bennett.

Bennett had pledged not to partner with leftwing, centrist and Arab parties, but on Wednesday announced with opposition leader Yair Lapid that they had formed a governing coalition with factions from across the political spectrum.

“We are witnessing the greatest election fraud in the history of the country, in my opinion in the history of any democracy,” Netanyahu said in comments to legislators of his rightwing Likud party.

“That’s why people justifiably feel deceived and they are responding: they must not be shut up,” he said in the remarks, which were broadcast live and referred indirectly to Bennett’s campaign promise not to team up with Lapid and others.

There's a novel idea - the legitimacy of an election hangs on the winner's commitment to his/her campaign promises.  You mean like social licence, electoral reform, First Nations reconciliation, no tankers, climate change, all that good stuff? Surely Bibi jests.

On Saturday, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency, Nadav Argaman, issued a rare public statement warning of a “severe escalation in violent and inciting discourse” on social media.

Bibi naturally demurred. 

“We can’t say that when criticism comes from the right, it’s incitement to violence, and when it comes from the left, that it’s a justified use of freedom of expression,” he told a meeting of Likud party members. “I condemn all incitement to violence.”

Foreign Policy asks how you say 'Stop the Steal' in Hebrew? 

Laughable as this all sounds, it has ominous overtones. The New York Times reports that Netanyahu may have triggered a violent reaction.

Far-right Jewish activists announced plans for a provocative march through Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem while, adding to the tensions, the Israeli police on Sunday detained a pair of Palestinian siblings whose activism and media appearances recently drew a wave of international attention to the displacement of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, forming the backdrop to the recent conflict in Gaza.

The events raised the specter of a new wave of turmoil in Israel and the occupied territories, just days before the Israeli Parliament is expected to hold a vote of confidence in a fragile new government whose formation would force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to leave office for the first time in 12 years.

In recent days, Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing supporters piled pressure on ultranationalist members of the coalition, attempting to persuade them to reverse course by accusing them of betraying the country. Mr. Netanyahu’s party, Likud, published the private address of a leading coalition lawmaker. And hundreds of right-wing protesters picketed the homes of several wavering coalition members.

Some analysts and commentators have compared the atmosphere to the time preceding the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the former prime minister who was killed by a Jewish extremist in 1995 after leading peace negotiations with the Palestinians.