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“You will be prime minister, but the Likud will not be the ruling party” — this angry prophecy was uttered by a top Likud minister in the ears of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about three months before elections, and a few hours before the Likud — Yisrael Beiteinu merger was officially declared.
“If you go with [then-foreign minister Avigdor] Liberman, you will lose the centrist votes that can be yours. It can cost us as much as ten mandates,” the minister warned. But his words evaporated in the euphoric atmosphere that Netanyahu created; Netanyahu was certain that he had forty secure mandates in hand.
