On May 1, during a visit to Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dropped a new political bombshell. He declared that in the upcoming Knesset session, which begins May 11, he is planning to promote a new basic law defining Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Made a few days after Holocaust Remembrance Day and a few days before Israel's 66th Independence Day, his declaration would seem to have come at a perfect time, at least on the face of it.

Netanyahu's declaration caught the Israeli political establishment completely by surprise. The Israeli parliament has already seen similar initiatives to pass such a basic law. In the previous Knesset, it was Avi Dichter, the former Shin Bet director, who submitted a similar bill. However, due to the controversy that ensued, it was shelved. And now, it is none other than the prime minister who plans to give it a go. And by doing so, he forced Tzipi Livni, the justice minister — the one who stands to lose the most from the breakdown of the negotiations with the Palestinians — to immediately announce that she would oppose the premier's initiative and take advantage of her position as justice minister to curb it.

The main reason prompting Netanyahu to come up with this idea is simple and ancient — politics. Throughout his entire previous term, Netanyahu placed Iran at the top of his agenda. The Iranian threat was at the core of Netanyahu's essence and his raison d'etre. It was the beacon that guided him. The Iranian issue is what made him what he is. Evoking the Holocaust, he pandered to the traumas that are etched in every Israeli and to the primal fears of the Jewish people in recent decades. Some of Netanyahu's ministers make this private, secret, semi-comical bet: whenever the prime minister takes the floor to address the Knesset or in some other official event, those ministers make a bet on "how long it will take until Bibi (Netanyahu) gets to the Iranian issue." Well, the Iranian issue is off the agenda, for now. The Israeli premier has been robbed of his main asset.

No worries, though: What has motivated Netanyahu in the past year is the diplomatic issue. Following herculean efforts, the Americans were able to jump-start the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, with Netanyahu clocking quite impressive political mileage with this bandwagon. Demanding that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, he turned it into a kind of a litmus test to prove that the Palestinians have come to terms with Israel's existence, or conversely, as proof that they are a far cry from accepting this, which is why there is no point in making interim agreements with them.