What should have been a laid-back afternoon stroll suddenly turned dizzily nerve-wracking. True, Benjamin Netanyahu will likely be the next prime minister, but before he gets sworn in, he’ll work up a sweat running back and forth pleading. He’ll rant and he’ll rage as he tries to squeeze the proverbial square peg into a round hole.

He’ll reinvent the wheel, and himself, while he’s at it. He’ll call for a National Unity government and he’ll talk about a broad-based government too. But deep inside he’ll know that he failed, that he suffered a devastating political blow, and that he received a resounding vote of no-confidence from the public. There can be no greater political drama. The pollsters fell asleep on their watch. The pundits couldn’t read the map. The people of Israel are smarter than all of them. They proved that they’re not suckers.

Let’s start with Netanyahu. Some people called him King Bibi, but this was a king whose very kingdom spewed him out, whose own subjects couldn’t stand him, and whose public voted no-confidence in him. This was a king who almost lost a war, even though there was no clear enemy. This was a king who only managed to tie a team of battered, defeated rivals down in the dirt without any real agenda. The only reason Benjamin Netanyahu will be prime minister is because there is no alternative, and that is the result of a series of fascist laws intended to isolate the political system and defend against any talented populist outsiders from gaining admittance. Netanyahu is one of the least popular Israeli prime ministers … ever!

He would have been tossed out of the prime minister’s office if only some reasonable candidate ran against him. It already happened to him once, in 1999.