Until Operation Protective Edge, former Likud Communication Minister Moshe Kahlon did very well in the polls. Though the theoretical party headed by him had yet to be formed, it still got between 10 and 14 seats. Kahlon has made up his mind not to return to the Likud as long as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was part of it. In private talks with political insiders, he estimated that a drama could unfold in the next elections when a coalition of party leaders coalesces to oppose Netanyahu, and prevents him from serving a fourth term as prime minister.

Based on assessments, which are getting more and more established, the political fragmentation will continue into the next elections. Six parties in the Knesset will be midsized or midsized-plus, and each of the people heading those parties will be able to form the next government. Those parties are the Likud, HaBayit HaYehudi, Yisrael Beitenu, Labor, Yesh Atid and Kahlon’s new party. Under such circumstances, even if the Likud under Netanyahu had the most seats of all the parties, he could still be prevented from forming a government if those parties formed an alliance to block him. According to the law as it currently stands, the president assigns the task of forming a government to the candidate with the best chances of fulfilling that task, and not necessarily to the head of the largest party.

In those talks, Kahlon toyed with a possible scenario after the next elections, in which he combined forces with the head of one of the other midsized parties to form a bloc that would prevent any other leader of a medium-sized party from forming a coalition. Based on this scenario, he and his partner would split the job of prime minister between them in a rotation agreement, thereby bringing the Netanyahu era in politics to an end. Since then, however, the conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted, and Kahlon’s virtual party shrunk in the two most recent polls to just seven seats. As far as Kahlon is concerned, the security agenda is his Achilles’ heel.

But even in the current situation, which could certainly change, a fragmented political system — especially when the right is fragmented — is the prime minister’s worst political nightmare. It makes Netanyahu the one person whom everyone wants to topple: Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on the right; Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Kahlon in the center, and the Labor Party and Meretz on the left. The political structure that is emerging finally does away with the traditional system of two large parties, Labor and Likud, and empowers also the leader of a midsized-plus party to become the Israeli prime minister if he is able to put together a coalition. That is exactly why Kahlon, Liberman, Isaac Herzog, Lapid and Bennett all believe that they could be the next prime minister. All they have to do is play their cards right before and after the election.