About a month ago, with Blue and White leader Benny Gantz’s deadline to form a new government about to run out, it seemed as if a unity government was closer than ever. Representatives of Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had almost completed an agreement, which included Netanyahu citing incapacity and resigning within a few months, mechanisms to make decisions with equal representation of both parties, the division of Cabinet portfolios (with defense and foreign affairs going to Blue and White) and various other agreements.

Though it wasn’t finalized, the overall impression was that a solution could be found for the issues where they disagreed. Then there was a turning point, coming mainly from Netanyahu. Suddenly, he set new conditions on a unity government and withdrew from prior agreements. According to one person involved in the negotiations, the Likud team was left feeling confused. Then, just a few days later, Netanyahu showed senior members of the Likud a series of new internal polls showing that if a third election was held, the right-wing bloc had a good chance of winning a majority of 61 seats, even without Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party.

In the first 2019 election, which took place in April, only 1,453 votes were missing to prevent the current political chaos. That was all the votes that the New Right party of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked needed to pass the electoral threshold of four Knesset seats. Without them, Netanyahu and his right-wing ultra-Orthodox bloc had only 60 seats. Had the New Right entered the Knesset, Netanyahu could have formed another right-wing coalition to continue the policies of his outgoing government.

Before the election this past September, Shaked and Bennett formed a single right-wing party with two religious Zionist parties: HaBayit HaYehudi and the National Union. Yet even that did not help the right-wing ultra-Orthodox bloc, which dropped to just 55 seats.