At the end of a perfect week, with various polls giving him somewhere between 19 and 21 Knesset seats if elections were held now, the chairman of the Yesh Atid Party, Yair Lapid, updated hundreds of thousands of his Facebook followers about a successful meeting he had the night before “in the living room of Jackie and Avi Zrihan in [the town of] Ashkelon.”

Lapid wrote, “Most of those present voted Likud, some were even members of the Likud Central Committee, but way before any political affiliation they are citizens who love the State of Israel." He continued, “'Just like you,’ I told them, ‘I grew up in a home that worshiped [late Prime Minister] Menachem Begin. His strength lay in his refusal to accept that something was impossible.'”

Lapid is adhering to a coherent strategic game plan designed to land him in the prime minister’s office in the next elections. To that end, he is canvassing Likud strongholds, hoping to pick up several more Knesset seats from that camp. This is everything that Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Camp failed to do in the March 2015 elections, leaving him in the opposition, even after he reached the finish line with the equivalent of 24 Knesset seats.

Lapid’s description of his nocturnal visits to the homes of Likud constituents, preferably those of Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) origin, with him being focused and enjoying the support of a calm party, highlights the Zionist Camp’s failure to forge a unified and militant alternative to the prime minister. If you will, Lapid in the living room of the Zrihan family in Ashkelon is the mirror image of the shouting match at the March 7 meeting of the Zionist Camp’s Knesset faction.