Incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to start forming a new ruling coalition next week after winning parliamentary elections.

Observers believe that as he embarks on his fourth term, Netanyahu would face daunting tasks in solving the security and socio-economic concerns of Israeli voters.

Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party gained one-fourth of the 120 Knesset (parliament) seats. Altogether, his right-wing allies, the ultra-orthodox parties and former Likud member Moshe Kahlon's Kulanu Party can give him a majority of 66 seats in the parliament.

"I think from his point of view what he (Netanyahu) has achieved is a greater ability to govern in terms of having a solid majority in his government without opposition forces from within, which is the problem that he had in the last government," Gershon Baskin, co-chairman of the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, told Xinhua.

The solid majority the Likud and its allies enjoy in the parliament would give Netanyahu a stronger mandate to carry out economic reforms in the housing sector and other economic areas, which he failed to launch in his previous terms.

Though Netanyahu clinched the stunning election victory by campaigning mainly on security issues, such as Iran and the Palestinian issue, calls for reforms to tackle socio-economic woes resounded in Tuesday's election, as reflected by the rise of the center Kulanu party and the fact that the center Yesh Atid remains a major force in the new parliament.

Socio-economic problems started to gain the attention of Israel's society even before the 2013 parliamentary elections. In 2011, tens of thousand of Israelis took to the streets to protest the high cost of living and the housing crisis, leading to the rise of the Yesh Atid party in the 2013 elections.

A recent official report revealed that between 2009 and 2013, housing prices in Israel jumped by 55 percent. While in January 2008 Israelis needed 103 monthly salaries to purchase an apartment, by the end of 2013 the figure had reached 137 months worth.

Currently, 148 months worth of a typical salary is needed to buy an apartment, compared to an average of 65 in the US, Britain and the Netherlands. The housing crisis has struck Israel's middle class and young people hard.

Netanyahu's new government will also have to address, among other security-diplomatic issues, the long-stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which have led to the increasing isolation of Israel on the international stage.

Unlike such security threats as Hezbollah and Hamas, the peace process can't be coped with through military means, Uri Dromi, executive director of the Jerusalem Press Club, wrote, adding that it requires Netanyahu to act as a statesman.

Observers believe that if Netanyahu refuses to row back on his pre-election far-right statements relating to the Palestinians, Israel may face growing pressure from the US administration and European countries and further isolation.

In order to win over right-wing voters, Netanyahu stated before the elections that there will be no Palestinian state if he was re-elected.

He also promised to continue construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, where Palestinians seek to build their own state.

"He, as prime minister of Israel, is going to be facing a reality on the ground locally, regionally and internationally, where as he declared prior to the elections there is no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the absence of any other alternative, and certainly Netanyahu never presented an alternative, we're going to face a growing reality of international isolation of Israel as a pariah state, which has created a one-state reality with two unequal peoples all under Israel's control. The world is not willing to accept apartheid," Baskin told Xinhua.

Dromi echoed Baskin's opinion. "Without a bold move in this arena, Israel will eventually become one binational state, where it either loses its Jewish identity or its democracy, or both," he said.

This is a commentary of the Xinhua News Agency. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn