Just before the Cabinet met on Oct. 5, immediately after the Sukkot holiday, the chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi, Minister of Education Naftali Bennett, paid a visit to the recent hotspots in Jerusalem to talk to police serving there.

As he prepared to disavow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “containment policy,” Bennett wanted to be ready for the inevitable conflict. Though he didn’t confront Netanyahu directly, his comments were enough to make the prime minister scowl uncomfortably and look at him scornfully. “I just came back from the field. I questioned soldiers and policemen,” said Bennett, “and they told me that they are not responding to provocations. I visited the Old City, and the police officers stationed there told me that there was no deterrence and that no one was afraid of them. Enough restraint on our part! Enough being so worried! We must act with force and determination.”

Even when he was in New York for the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu realized that his minister of education was preparing to outflank him from the right in response to a wave of bloody terrorist attacks. Using a series of media interviews, Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, also from the HaBayit HaYehudi party, laid out a series of demands, including the rearrest of prisoners released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal and a resumption of settlement construction in the West Bank. But Netanyahu came ready for the political fight. In a chiding tone, he cautioned Bennett, and said, “What happened in Operation Protective Edge will not be happening again. Do you hear me?” Netanyahu was referring to the criticism expressed by Bennett at the time for avoiding a ground attack on Gaza. What the prime minister was trying to do was to show that Bennett was irresponsible and inexperienced, or in other words, the polar opposite of him. And he implied a political threat, too. If you keep it up, he insinuated, you won’t be in this government for much longer. Netanyahu was referring to the possibility of him forming a unity government with Isaac Herzog and the Zionist Camp, an alternative much preferred by the two other coalition partners, Ministers Aryeh Deri of the Shas Party and Moshe Kahlon of the Kulanu Party.

The Cabinet meeting was especially tense. If anything, it highlighted yet again how much Netanyahu loathes the head of HaBayit HaYehudi and also the ongoing mutual deterrence balance between the two men, continuously competing over the right-wing electorate. Most of all, it underscored Bennett’s plan to succeed Netanyahu as the leader of the right.