Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his multiparty coalition have overcome the most significant obstacle to their political survival with this week’s 48-hour Knesset voting marathon approving the state’s 2021-22 budget. Bennett can chalk up a major victory, but the real winner is his Alternate Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. Passage of the budget despite the opposition’s best efforts to scuttle it ensures with almost complete political and legal certainty that Israel’s prime minister a year and 10 months from now, at the latest, will be Lapid.

The coalition agreement of last June between Bennett and Lapid states that Lapid will take over the premiership seat after two years of Bennett sitting in this chair. Under an amendment to the quasi-constitutional Basic Law, the government, instigated last year, even if the government is brought down for some reason before Bennett and Lapid implement their agreed half-term job switch, Lapid would automatically become prime minister and head a transitional government until a new government is formed. To sum up, this week marked the completion of Bennett’s mission, augured the realization of Lapid’s dream and drew former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu closer to the end of his political road.

Despite the background noise, glitches, record low popularity and very modest polling results — giving his Yamina party barely six seats in the 120-member Knesset — Bennett has achieved almost everything he set out to do when he assumed power in mid-June. He has restored Israel's warm relationship with Jordan, enhanced its alliance with Egypt, bolstered the Abraham Accords, created a rapport with US President Joe Biden and held a series of meetings on the sidelines of the Glasgow climate summit with world leaders, including Indian Premier Narendra Modi, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron.

Within barely five months, Bennett has somehow brought about relative calm on the Gaza border, pioneered a world-first vaccine booster campaign that quelled the deadly coronavirus Delta variant without imposing major restrictions and successfully skipped over the many landmines planted by his predecessor. The highlight was a lengthy five-hour meeting Oct. 22 with Russian President Vladimir Putin, long considered one of Netanyahu’s biggest foreign policy assets. When the gavel sounded at the Knesset in the early morning hours of Nov. 5, ending the exhausting budget voting spree, Bennett breathed a huge sigh of relief.