“Benny, it is clear that your genuine willingness to join an emergency government faces the cynical deceitfulness of a defendant trying to avoid a trial. If you agree to his terms for the consolidation of his rule, placing him above the law, you will betray the principles that united us. It is not too late to compensate for losing your direction.” Moshe Ya’alon, former military chief of staff and defense minister, tweeted this personal appeal to Blue and White leader Benny Gantz on April 13 in light of renewed negotiations between Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on forming a power-sharing emergency government. It was Ya’alon's way of telling Gantz that he can still change his mind about fracturing Blue and White and abandoning the anti-Netanyahu alliance.

Gantz is unlikely to do an about-face and attempt to reunite the alliance, which fell apart in one stormy moment on March 29 when he decided to join a Netanyahu-led government. For now, Ya’alon and Yair Lapid, Gantz's former leadership colleagues in Blue and White, appear to have been right. They broke from Gantz, taking with them 16 Knesset members, about half of Blue and White's original 33 seats, warning him that he would fall victim to Netanyahu’s manipulations and become yet another statistic on the prime minister’s political hit list. Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman warned Gantz that a coalition with Netanyahu would signal the end of his political career, calling the former army chief a political rookie.

Gantz did not listen. Instead, he did what he believed to be right, making the courageous decision to see through all efforts to form a unity government with Netanyahu’s Likud in order to deal with the COVID-19 crisis and its fallout. The proposed deal would have had him replacing Netanyahu as prime minister in October 2021, but coalition talks blew up on April 8, on the eve of Passover, after Netanyahu pulled the emergency brake, leaving Gantz with only half of his party, without a coalition agreement and knowing that he would have to return his mandate to President Reuven Rivlin on April 13 and concede defeat in his effort to form a new government. Gantz's 28 days to form a government end April 13 with the stroke of midnight.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s poll numbers continue to climb under the auspices of the coronavirus crisis, breaking his own popularity records. Polls show his Likud winning more than 40 Knesset seats if elections were held today, providing him with a favorable launch pad for a fourth round of elections after three inconclusive rounds since April 2019.