Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has less than 20 days left to ask the Speaker of the Knesset for immunity from trial. Everything seems to indicate that the request will soon come. After it does, the request will become the central, and perhaps decisive, issue of the March 2, 2020, election.

Unlike the elections this year in April and September, in the forthcoming vote the issue of immunity will be set clearly on the table, without filters or distortion. As Knesset member David Bitan stated candidly on Dec. 11 just before the 22nd Knesset dissolved itself and Israelis prepared for another election, “[Netanyahu] is running. He is looking for another chance to win 61 seats and maybe even get immunity.” Miki Zohar, chairman of the Likud's Knesset faction, has been using every available opportunity to say that he will recommend that Netanyahu request immunity, as is his legal right. It doesn’t look like he will have to try too hard to convince the prime minister to do so.

Over the last few days, Netanyahu has told Likud activists in private meetings that he believes he will be able to win 61 seats for the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox bloc, even without Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beitenu. If he succeeds, he has an open road ahead of him in his drive for immunity. Even though no polls currently predict that the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox bloc will win 61 seats without Liberman, Netanyahu is clutching this plan with everything he has. It is the only way he can be spared immediate political oblivion and a trial.

In the quest for immunity, Netanyahu can no longer rely on Liberman. On Dec. 12, the Yisrael Beitenu chairman delivered the death blow to any possibility, no matter how slim, that he might help Netanyahu obtain immunity. He did, however, raise the possibility of Netanyahu being pardoned in exchange for retiring from politics and has said that he would support such a deal. “In general, the Knesset is fed up with Netanyahu. He has become a burden,” Liberman declared in a particularly icy tone during an interview with Ynet. “No immunity, pardon in exchange for honorable retirement.”