In the recent elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost a lot more than his ultra-Orthodox partners, who had provided a coalition safety net for him. On Monday evening, March 18, at the swearing-in of the new government, Netanyahu sadly bade farewell to the octet members — the experienced and highly regarded members of the defense forum who had surrounded him in the last four years.

In his third government, which started operations this week, Netanyahu decided to cancel the octet and transform the diplomatic-security cabinet into a highest-level security forum.

Netanyahu and his octet members had accumulated hundreds of discussion hours deep into the night on security-related issues, largely on the Iranian nuclear crisis. But from this moment on, every time Israel’s prime minister looks around at the members of his pared-down diplomatic-security cabinet, he will see young, inexperienced people. They will be his partners in the most difficult, harshest decisions, perhaps even the most dramatic of them all — to attack or not to attack.

In fact, this is one of the least experienced cabinets in the annals of Israeli governments.