Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is so wedded to his alliance with the ultra-Orthodox, his “natural partners,” that he cannot overcome his old habits and fears and notice that the opportunity of a lifetime awaits under his very nose: to head a government that would be the best for most of the Israeli public. A government with the Likud-Beiteinu, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, Naftali Bennett’s HaBayit HaYehudi party, along with HaTenua leader Tzipi Livni and Kadima Chairman Shaul Mofaz, has an excellent chance of ruling effectively and leading civil and economic reforms, thereby reflecting the will of the Israeli public as manifested at the polls.

The recent elections demonstrate that Israelis did, indeed, grant Netanyahu a mandate to keep leading them, but at the same time forced upon him the makeup of his government and its agenda.

Even though Netanyahu does not want it, such a government might even propel him to personal and national achievements. He need not run scared of the Lapid-Bennett alliance. He is better off viewing it as a means to promote a series of civil and economic reforms, which could determine the shape of the Israeli society in the coming decades and contribute to its fortitude no less so than blocking the Iranian nuclear program.

The “kegs of dynamite” upon which Israeli society rests, in the shape of the law of “shared burden” [requiring the military draft of the ultra-Orthodox] and the ongoing crises over conversion to Judaism and housing prices, must find themselves at the heart of the third Netanyahu government’s agenda.