Some people may have hoped for the extraordinary to happen right at the very last minute, just before the parties running for the 23rd Knesset were required to submit their candidate lists. But soon after the clock struck twelve, they saw their hopes shattered. The deadline was midnight on Jan. 15, and when it passed, there was no sign that any of the lists would break the deadlock between the two blocs.

After the merger of Labor-Gesher with Meretz on the left, the parties to the right of the Likud followed their example with the merger of the New Right, HaBayit HaYehudi and the National Union. It looks like both camps learned their lesson. This time, competing egos and statements from the past were put aside, and merger agreements were cobbled together and signed in a matter of hours. In doing this, they were reducing the risk that one party or another would fail to pass the electoral threshold of four Knesset seats and that their absence would mean that the bloc would not have enough seats to prevent the rival bloc from forming a government. Still, on the right, Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party was not part of these recent mergers and will run independently.

In the case of the right-wing parties, the merger agreement was only signed minutes before midnight, after the deadline was extended slightly. All in all, it was one of the most bizarre nights in the history of the Knesset, and there have been quite a few of those over the last year. As the new right-wing alliance (Yamina) was putting together its list of candidates, a stunned Ben-Gvir was making his way from one news studio to the next to attack Rafi Peretz, chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi and minister of education, on live TV. He slandered Peretz for violating an earlier agreement signed with him and leaving him out of the picture.

At that moment, the religious Zionist movement seemed especially pathetic. It looked like little more than an aggressive group driven by internal interests. Rather than showing any independent leadership or authority, it looked like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was calling all the shots.