After the 100-day grace period for the third Netanyahu government passed, dozens of key Likud members met in Holon on Tuesday (June 11). Together, they came out publicly against the prime minister’s intentions to bring about full consolidation of former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman's party — Yisrael Beiteinu with the Likud.

This is the sounding of a warning bell for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been losing his hold over his party, ever since the failed election campaign that he waged.

But it's not only within the Likud that Netanyahu appears to have lost his way and emerge as unsuccessful at effecting any kind of important development. The socio-economic battlefield has been captured by Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Economics and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett — two young ministers aspiring to challenge their prime minister, each in his own way. Yet Netanyahu, who became the man most identified with the Israeli economy since 2003, when he was appointed finance minister by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, seems to have been struck dumb.

Netanyahu chose this path to distance himself from the truncated budget, and allow Lapid alone to bear the burden. While the prime minister succeeded in passing the hot potato to Lapid, this caused Netanyahu to appear to the public as shirking his responsibility. Until recently, Netanyahu used to boast that he was the “super-minister” of economics, the one who  saved Israel from a Greek-style collapse; now, he has absented himself from the very arena that had been so identified with him.