Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son and shadow twitterer, dislikes the term “gatekeepers,” which he claims — erroneously — is unique to the State of Israel. In his mind, gatekeepers are the bouncers who greet him at strip clubs he patronizes. For Benjamin Netanyahu’s son-cum-spokesman, public servants, especially those employed by the state prosecution and police, “are miserable little clerks who serve radical left-wing agendas opposed to the voters’ will, frame innocent people and criminally leak skewed information to their friends in the leftist media,” as he put it in an Aug. 14 tweet. The Netanyahu family prefers elected officials who serve their agenda, frame photos of themselves with the prime minister and leak inflammatory information to their friends in the media.

The April elections resulted not with the composition of a government, but with the Knesset disbanded and with a decision to hold new elections in September. Consequently, ever since the April elections, Israel is ruled by a transition government with limited powers. This means that since the election held in April, more so since the one on Sept. 17, and until further notice, elected officials do not really express the will of the voter. As the Supreme Court ruled last month in a petition against the replacement of the director-general of the Justice Ministry, members of Israel’s caretaker government are not even authorized to appoint new senior officials. As proven by the debacle of Netanyahu’s attempts earlier this month to push through a law allowing political parties to film voters at polling stations, the temporary government does not even enjoy a Knesset majority to pass legislation, including the Budget Law.

On the other hand, the government is authorized to order an invasion of the Gaza Strip at the cost of hundreds of lives; the temporary ministers are authorized to approve a decision by the prime minister to invade Lebanon and even to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

These scenarios are not the product of a deranged mind. Several days prior to the recent elections, head of the National Security Council Meir Ben-Shabbat asked Central Election Committee Chair Justice Hanan Melcer to prepare for a possible delay of the elections due to a large-scale military offensive in Gaza.