The election campaign that Israel got pulled into like some drowning man sucked into a whirlpool will revolve around one simple question: Are you for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or against him? Will the accumulating critical mass of Israeli public disdain for Netanyahu, who has governed the country for almost six consecutive years (and a total of almost nine years), suffice for him to be uprooted from the Prime Minister’s Residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem? Will politicians on the right such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, former Minister Moshe Kahlon (who started a new party) and maybe even Shas party leader Aryeh Deri agree to become ''camp crossers'' and “tiebreakers,” allowing the center-left bloc to form a government in Israel?

Disdain toward Netanyahu will not be enough to remove him from power. With the Israeli public still moving to the right, even if Netanyahu is defeated, he may still be able to put together a coalition, given the fact that together with the ultra-Orthodox, Economy and Trade Minister and HaBayit HaYehudi party leader Naftali Bennett, and one or two other parties (Liberman, Kahlon), he will be able to cross the 61-seat majority threshold and put his fourth government together.

In all this commotion, there will be one surprising issue to gain special attention: the relationship between Israel and the United States. Elections in Israel are usually decided on other issues: the security situation, the economic situation, or the personality of the opponents. This time it seems as if the relationship between Israel and its biggest, most important ally will take up a major slice of the campaign.

Yair Lapid, the leader of Yesh Atid and the former Finance Minister sacked by Netanyahu, fired the opening shot Dec. 3 in a speech he delivered at a prime-time news conference. He used the speech to get back at Netanyahu for an address Netanyahu delivered one day earlier. Lapid referred to Netanyahu as being “out of touch” on 12 separate occasions during the speech. He also brought up the “unprecedented low” in the relationship between Israel and the United States. “You caused an ongoing severe damage to the strategic alliance between Israel and the US,” said Lapid. “Senators call me to find out about your patronizing and disparaging treatment of our best friend in the world, whose relationship with us is our greatest security asset. Go explain to them that you're so disconnected that you think America is stuck in the '80s. At one point, you understood America, but America has changed, and you are disconnected.”