In the run-up to the 2009 election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a poll to the Likud showing that the party stood to lose four seats if it included Moshe Feiglin in its Knesset list. Feiglin chaired the Likud’s far-right “Jewish Leadership” faction, made up mostly of settlers. It was the most extreme faction in the party at a time when Netanyahu wanted to shift toward the center, and he was concerned that Feiglin would harm the party’s image. His effort succeeded. Using a series of procedural moves, he was able to push Feiglin to an unrealistic 36th place on the list. But that was not all: Netanyahu also warned Likud Knesset members that anyone who participated in Feiglin’s events would not be a given a ministry in his next government.

Feiglin has long since parted ways with the Likud. In 2015, he founded the Zehut Party, which now looks likely to play a decisive role in the coming election. Polls predict the party winning five to as many as seven seats. While most of its supporters are religious Jews on the right, the current assessment is that it will get one and a half seats from the center-left. Feiglin of all people has managed to shatter the traditional divide between left and right and blur the differences between them.

His past as a militant right-wing ideologue, convicted in the 1990s of unlawful assembly and sedition as a result of his activities to impede the Oslo Accords, has been erased from the public memory. He has managed to reposition himself from religious settler to refreshing new voice. He is now seen as a free-market liberal who supports the separation of religion and state and overturning the old order, and his winning card is his support for the legalization of marijuana. It’s all working like a charm.

At an April 2 gathering of party activists at Hangar 11 in the Tel Aviv port, Feiglin drew some 2,000 supporters, many of them young. They included people who had previously voted for Meretz, Labor, Yesh Atid, Kulanu, the Likud and HaBayit HaYehudi. At the gathering, Feiglin announced that he is not committed to supporting any party in the coalition negotiations and that he is not in anyone’s pocket. This means that Feiglin could be the deciding factor in determining the next prime minister. The president will task the person with the best chances of composing a majority coalition and establishing the next government. Should the battle between the Likud and the Blue and White Party prove as close as the polls indicate, Feiglin will be a power broker, as he is committed to neither. Both parties have been sending out feelers to him over the past few days. Still, since Feiglin started out in the far right, he's likely to pick Netanyahu in the end.