Netanyahu Israel’s election win propels far right to power
"Things will be better now. When he's the public security minister, they'll be better still," Julian, an enthusiastic backer of firebrand politician Itamar Ben-Gvir told me at his campaign headquarters.
"He wants the best for Israel. He wants the terrorists out," said Noam from a settlement in the occupied West Bank. "We don't want the Arabs; they throw rocks at us and take our spots in Israel," he said before being hushed by a party activist.
While Mr Ben-Gvir - previously convicted as a racist in Israel - is now attempting to rebrand himself as a more conventional politician, he has not changed all his anti-Arab rhetoric.
"It's time to be the landlords of this country again," he said after exit polls were published on Tuesday night.
His cheering crowd in Jerusalem mostly kept to their new chant of "death to terrorists", adjusted from the one we often previously heard from his supporters - "death to Arabs".
Other journalists and I are used to covering Mr Ben-Gvir's provocative actions in bitterly contested occupied East Jerusalem. More than once, I have seen him jubilantly leading ultra-nationalist marchers through a sensitive site for Palestinians in the Old City on Israel's Jerusalem Day.
Last month, he inflamed tensions in the flashpoint Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood by pointing a gun at Palestinians during clashes.
Now, as co-leader of the third biggest party, Religious Zionism, he hopes for a prominent cabinet position overseeing the police.
One young female supporter of Mr Ben-Gvir's Oztma Yehudit (Jewish Power) faction, Tzori Elmakiyes, 17, from Jerusalem, said the results were "very gratifying", playing down critics' fears.
"I don't think the opponents of Ozma Yehudit should be worried because, at the end of the day, the party's best interests are the people and the country of Israel."
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