Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman planned this ruse as one would plan a political assassination. On May 1, he told Al-Monitor in a phone conversation that “everything is possible. The chances that I’ll become part of the government are 50-50; I'm truly undecided because [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu violated his promises and I cannot be partner to a government that will cancel all the achievements we scored in the previous government.”

My guess is that during that conversation, Liberman already knew he was not part of the game. His supreme goal at this very moment is to bring Netanyahu down, and Liberman has the knowledge and the talents to carry this out. “I assume that this government won’t survive to the end of the year,” Liberman said the day after he resigned. In closed talks, he added that panic will cause Netanyahu to make mistakes that will speed up the end to his fourth government. Liberman promises that he will do everything possible to forestall a fifth Netanyahu government. It is a life-or-death political duel between two historic allies who burst into Israeli politics together in the 1996 elections and since then have steadily moved apart, until becoming almost opposites on the spectrum.

On the morning of May 5, after his resounding resignation and proclamation that he would not join the coalition, Liberman told Al-Monitor, “I will not join the government because Netanyahu has no intentions of doing anything and is not capable of carrying out anything. Note the similarities between Netanyahu and [Palestinian] President Mahmoud Abbas, it is fascinating: You see, President Mahmoud Abbas will never fight us, will never sign a peace agreement with us and will never resign. Bibi [Netanyahu] is the same. He will not take any real steps, not in the direction of the Middle East, not in the direction of a regional arrangement and also not an assault on Iran. The only thing he will do is to preserve things as they are, mainly his rulership. I remember the letter that Netanyahu sent to Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Shamir prior to the Ahmed Jibril prisoner exchange deal [in May 1985]. The letter contained all the correct, intelligent arguments and rationales; there's no one like Bibi writing these kinds of letters, he explained exactly why it is forbidden to surrender to terror and all the harmful repercussions of such a move. Afterward he comes and does exactly the same in the [Gilad] Shalit deal. You have to remember what he said after Operation Cast Lead [2008-2009] when he promised to bring down the Hamas regime, and what he actually did in the territory [Gaza] during the Protective Edge campaign [July-August 2014], when he ensured the continuation of the Hamas regime. I’m finished with his way of doing things.”

Liberman has a long list of political debts to settle against Netanyahu, some of which he detailed here. There are other slights, too, which include Netanyahu’s promise to the ultra-Orthodox to revoke the conversion reforms — reforms that are very important to Liberman’s constituents; the decision to again increase the number of ministers in the government; the attempt to force all the coalition partners to sign a clause ensuring Netanyahu’s sole rule of Israel’s media market; and Netanyahu’s intentions of attaching the Zionist Camp to the government immediately after its current leader Isaac Herzog wins his party’s primaries. Liberman knew that he would have been a temporary foreign minister, only until Herzog was ready to join and get the portfolio, so he decided to cut loose now.