Developments in the past week make the upcoming Israeli election one of the most contested and complex in decades.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, just months away from becoming the country’s longest-serving leader, could plausibly lose his position to a new center-left coalition. At the same time, Netanyahu is being pilloried by mainstream Jewish organizations and the media alike for arranging a marriage between Bayit Yehudi and Otzma Yehudit, a Meir Kahane–inspired party. If that weren’t enough, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit is expected to announce his decision soon on whether Netanyahu should be prosecuted in three cases arrayed against him. All in all, it was a bad week for the prime minister.

The greatest threat comes in the form of the new Kachol Lavan party, headed by Chosen L’Israel’s Benny Gantz and Moshe (Boogie) Yaalon. The pair pulled off a last-minute union with Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (and former general Gabi Ashkenazi) that polls say could net 35 seats. By contrast, those same polls show Likud winning 29 to 30 seats.

This isn’t the first time Netanyahu has faced a serious threat at the ballot box. In 2015, polls showed Yitzhak Herzog’s and Tzipi Livni’s joint Hamachaneh Hatzioni party taking the election, only to have the Likud surge in the final days. In addition, in 2008, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima party won the election with 28 mandates, but it was Likud with 27 that ultimately formed the government.

Nevertheless, this time it looks different. Former generals hold a certain mystique among Israeli voters, and it’s no simple matter when three former IDF chiefs of staff harshly criticize Netanyahu’s security strategy. What’s more, it seems that the question is not whether Mandelblit will indict but whether he will indict Netanyahu on all three investigations or just one or two. Various sources I spoke to think Mandelbit will indict in at least two out of the three, with a bribery charge appearing as at least one.

As of this writing, the polls give the Kachol Lavan party a lead of five to six mandates over Likud, meaning it stands a better chance of forming the next government. Consequently, Netanyahu is now scrambling to form a strong right-wing bloc that will allow him to form a government, or at the very least, to obstruct Kachol Lavan. According to the polls, the right-wing faction (Likud, the New Right, Bayit Yehudi, Otzma Yehudit, and the National Union) could win 48 seats, and together with the chareidi parties, they would control 60 seats. However, polls also indicate that the center-left bloc (Kachol Lavan, Labor, Meretz) could win 48 seats. Together with the Arab parties, their coalition could also total 60 seats.

New Right party chairman Naftali Bennett — who has been outflanked on the right by Netanyahu and on the left by Kachol Lavan — told Mishpacha he expects Netanyahu to invite Kachol Lavan into his next government: “The day after elections, Likud and Kachol Lavan will form a unity government, based on the Trump plan to found a Palestinian state. I’m familiar with the plan. The same Netanyahu who appointed Gantz as chief of staff and who appointed Lapid as finance minister will bring them into the coalition this time, too. Netanyahu always starts by bringing in the left. In 2009, he brought in Ehud Barak and then went on to liberate 1,000 terrorists.”

MK Uri Maklev of Degel HaTorah told me the chareidi parties are frustrated that the electoral season will surely allow Lapid to scapegoat the chareidi public for Israel’s various societal ills.

“Yesh Atid will be leading Kachol Lavan’s election campaign, meaning we’ll be served up a daily litany of hate talk, along with hefty servings of divisiveness and incitement. Lapid has already stated that he pays more taxes because of the chareidim. It’s awful. His hatred drives him insane.”

Maklev said the chareidi parties are now in a “public relations catch-22.”

“If we focus on the incitement, we’ve played right into their hands,” he said. “And yet, the public wants an answer to their claims. If we say we won’t sit in a government together with a person who incites against us, that could result in knee-jerk support for those wanting to cast a specifically anti-chareidi vote.”

Maklev believes that Kachol Lavan would not be an effective governing party, and there’s no chance the chareidi bloc would sit in a government with Lapid. On Gantz specifically, Maklev calls him a “rookie” with no proven track record in politics and no discernible positions.

“Gantz hasn’t the first idea how to run a coalition,” he said. “Look how hard Netanyahu has to work to keep the government together. Running a large party is no simple matter, all the more so a coalition where each partner pulls in a different direction, and you have to constantly deal with bickering or a full-blown emergency.”

The future of the draft law is the biggest concern for the chareidi bloc. The coalition was near an agreement last Knesset on a draft amendment that would have set quotas and a clear timeline for drafting some chareidi young men. But then politics intervened, and some chareidi members balked on the terms.

Shas chairman Aryeh Deri, who has earned the respect of the security establishment, has discussed the issue with people who are close to Benny Gantz. Deri heard from them that Gantz is sensitive to the issue and agrees that a solution must be found. Maklev has also had contact with the Gantz camp on the issue. “It’s like a sword spinning over our heads,” Maklev told the Gantz representatives.

Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman has also held discussions with former defense minister Moshe Yaalon, with whom he has a friendly and mutually respectful relationship. Last week, after the deal among Gantz, Yaalon, and Lapid was announced, Litzman conveyed a message of disappointment and concern for the future of the draft law to Yaalon.

The former chief of staff responded that his position has not changed one iota.

“There are often significant gaps between talk and actual actions,” Yaalon said. “The draft law is one of the things the next government will need to work on in cooperation with the chareidi parties, and that is what we will do,” he said.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 750)