Until two months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed unbeatable. Then, police accelerated investigations against him. If indicted, he could actually vanish from the political scene abruptly. And so, even if it is not at all certain whether Netanyahu will be indicted, his unstable political situation has provoked potential heirs within the Likud and right-wing camp rivals to quietly start preparing for the day the Netanyahu era comes to an end.

Netanyahu’s rivals all share the same working assumption that the right will stay in power, and so the leader of the right will be Israel's next prime minister. The exciting succession battle that is fought right now will reshape the right-wing camp, since Netanyahu has no natural heir. For the most part, the leadership of the right has long been in the image of a single man (Netanyahu), who made sure to eliminate his rivals and sideline his party's most upper echelons.

Senior Likud ministers such as Yisrael Katz and Gilad Erdan may picture themselves as competing for who will take over from Netanyahu, but they would not dare do anything to bring down the prime minister. This grants Netanyahu a modicum of in-house peace and quiet. Outside the party, however, the whir of activity is causing more of a commotion. Former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon is preparing to create a new right-wing nationalist party with himself as its leader, all in keeping with the plan he laid out when he quit the government on May 20, 2016, and announced that he intends to run for leader of the country. Former Minister Gideon Saar is also whetting his own swords for the day after. According to indications, he plans to run for prime minister from within the Likud.

The leaders of two sectoral parties that are members of the ruling coalition have also been keeping their eyes on the prize, hoping to become leader of the Likud in the next election. The first is the chairman of Yisrael Beitenu, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. The second is Education Minister Naftali Bennett, the chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi. The big difference between them is that while Liberman may be keeping a close eye on events, he is also backing Netanyahu wholeheartedly, mainly because the Defense Ministry has been very good to him, so he hopes to serve there for as long as possible. Bennett, on the other hand, is already piecing together the strategy that will lead him to the prime minister’s residence. Both men are fully aware that they cannot compete for leadership of the right from a sectoral party: a party of Russian immigrants in the case of Liberman, and a party on the far right in the case of Bennett. That is why the only path for them to achieve their goal passes through the foremost party on the right — the Likud.