These are most important days in the life of Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman, Israel’s most enigmatic politician. Liberman emigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union at the age of 20 and, against all odds, served in the following positions: head of the prime minister’s office, national infrastructure minister, transportation minister, foreign minister and defense minister. Now he’s the one who holds the keys to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's future, perhaps even the future of the entire state.

It had seemed that Liberman had already done everything he could and that in the last two campaigns he had run out of steam and exhausted his political career. It had seemed clear that he would never break the armored glass ceiling that prevents people like him from reaching the top.

But Liberman now celebrates a tremendous personal victory: It was he, and not his rival, New Right party leader Naftali Bennett (whose new party did not cross the threshold), who was elected to the Knesset with four other legislators to become the official tiebreaker. Netanyahu cannot form a government without him. Liberman had presented his detailed political demands in advance, even before the elections, and then festively announced that he has no intentions of backtracking one iota from them. No one took him seriously. Now, everyone takes him seriously.

The most salient demand is, of course, the ultra-Orthodox draft bill (regulating exemptions from mandatory military service for yeshiva students). Liberman proclaims that if this bill — which already passed its first reading in the Knesset in July 2018 — does not pass immediately as is in the second and third readings, then he’s out. It’s that simple. But the ultra-Orthodox — mainly United Torah Judaism chairman Yaakov Litzman, who represents Israel’s largest Hassidic Gur faction — demand changes. Liberman answers a resounding "nyet" and Netanyahu is trapped in the crossfire between the sides.