Just before Israeli polling stations closed at 10:00 p.m. on March 2 and news networks released their exit poll results, Yaakov Bardugo, an Army Radio political pundit with close ties to the Likud, proclaimed that Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman no longer held the balance of power in the Knesset and that his party would almost certainly suffer a significant loss, after winning eight seats in the September 2019 election. The last polls before March 2 predicted a loss in strength for Liberman, after he sent the country into a tailspin in November 2018 by resigning as defense minister. With 92.5% of the votes counted, Yisrael Beitenu appears to have won seven seats. In other words, despite grim expectations and Bardugo’s prediction, Liberman only lost one seat, and that can be attributed to high voter turnout.

It was premature to eulogize Yisrael Beitenu, which had managed to reinvent itself in 2019 by positioning itself as a secular alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing/ultra-Orthodox bloc. Nevertheless, Netanyahu increasing Likud's seats by four, to 36 — leaving him only two seats short of his coveted 61-seat majority coalition — presents a challenge to Liberman’s status as the kingmaker who holds the balance of power. The modest press conference on election night at Yisrael Beitenu headquarters and Liberman’s tired face spoke for themselves.

A senior member of Yisrael Beitenu told Al-Monitor that if, as it seems, the right-wing/ultra-Orthodox bloc holds steady at 59 or 60 seats, his party will no longer be able to block the formation of a new government. At the same time, he repeated Liberman’s pledge that he would not be part of a right-wing/ultra-Orthodox government, noting that the party has no problem sitting in opposition, as it has in the past.

The new seating landscape appears to demand that Yisrael Beitenu reassess its position. A year ago, in the April 2019 election, Yisrael Beitenu only won five seats. Nevertheless, Liberman managed to extricate himself from this low point with a bold and unexpected move: He withdrew Yisrael Beitenu from the right-wing/ultra-Orthodox bloc and took an independent stand on matters of state and religion. It immediately made him a hot commodity in the political arena.