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By Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off his Likud party's election campaign he chose the venue with great calculation: the walled citadel of King David in Jerusalem's Old City.

The location was the message, and the message was that Jerusalem, as Israel's self-proclaimed "eternal and united capital," is under siege. Palestinians are pushing to divide the city and want to make eastern Jerusalem their capital.

Netanyahu's contention -- reflected in his campaign slogan "A strong leader for the future of Israel" -- is that only he can properly defend Jerusalem. It is a variation on the "peace and security" mantra which lifted him to power three years ago.

This show of strength, however, works only with half of Israel -- those who already support Netanyahu. Nevertheless, an overwhelming majority of Israelis share the prime minister's belief that the May 17 election is critical.

They know their next leader will have to:

• Address the frozen, Wye River land-for-security agreement with the Palestinians and tackle the seemingly intractable issues of Palestinian statehood, borders, refugees, settlements and Jerusalem.

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• Find a viable way out of Israel's entanglement in southern Lebanon and revive the peace process with Syria.

• Reconcile a society plagued by divisions between secular and religious Jews, between Ashkenazim (Jews of European descent) and Sephardim (Jews of Spanish or Portuguese origin), and between old elites and their would-be usurpers.

With so much at stake, pundits are puzzled by what was an uncharacteristically torpid campaign. One explanation is that Israelis are suffering from over-exposure after a five-month campaign.

Netanyahu's fiercest critics argue that he has spent the last three years of his rule engaged in political in-fighting that has been geared to ensuring his eventual re-election.

More pertinently, there has been a narrowing of old ideological arguments. When the right-wing Netanyahu government approved the Wye River accord last October and then actually handed over some West Bank land to the Palestinians, a threshhold was crossed.

Most Israelis find themselves able to line up with the land-for-peace formula. The issue for them is no longer the principle, but just how much land they will have to pay for peace.

There is also a growing realization among Israelis that a Palestinian state is inevitable. Polls show that most Israelis accept that there will eventually be such a state, even though not all of them believe the Palestinians deserve it.

Political re-alignment is also reflected in the unwillingness of most candidates to resort to the old iron-clad, ideological credos of the past. They have been vague about territorial concessions in the West Bank to the Palestinians and about the future of Jerusalem. They also have been vague about how much of the Golan Heights should be returned to Syria.

Instead, Netanyahu's challenger, Labor's Ehud Barak has made this a one-issue election: Benjamin Netanyahu. Love him or hate him.

The "Anyone but Bibi" campaign -- referring to Netanyahu by his nickname -- has concentrated on what his opponents think is the prime minister's Achilles' heel: his so-called personality flaws.

Also, with Netanyahu's former defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai dropping out of the race for prime minister a day before the election, there was a distinct and steady drift away from the incumbent and a build-up of support for Barak. A worried Netanyahu pulled off the gloves, insisting that his Likud party campaign ads dredge up the old horror scenes of suicide bombing attacks in Israeli streets. He blames the Labor opposition for being soft on Palestinian terror.

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Most Israelis find themselves able to line up with the land-for-peace formula. The issue for them is no longer the principle, but just how much land they will have to pay for peace.

Special interest groups who are expected to vote en bloc will want the next prime minister to feel that he owes them because they won him the election. Among the key groups lobbying for their respective agendas are Russian immigrants (12 percent of voters), Arabs (14 percent) and the ultra-religious (around 15 percent).

But the key to victory could lie, as it did in 1996, with those who are undecided -- about 15 percent of the voters. Many are underprivileged people who have long felt shut out of mainstream politics and society.

Many of these "silent voices" neither answer the pollsters nor appear on talk shows. But in 1996, they were critical in boosting Netanyahu to power by a slender margin of just 30,000 votes.

Even though many of them share the widespread conviction that he has not been a very good prime minister, the big unknown is whether they will vote against him. Or will they remain loyal to their deep-rooted cultural aversions to the establishment, embrace their "Bibi" once more and help him prevail again?

Pierre Klochendler is a producer in CNN's Jerusalem bureau.

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