“Netanyahu failed again,” tweeted Yair Lapid, number two on the Blue and White party list. “It’s already a pattern.”
That was the evening of Oct. 21, just a few minutes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he was returning his mandate to form a new government to President Reuven Rivlin. Lapid’s tweet reflected a very real situation. Netanyahu had just failed to form a government for the second consecutive time. It was a serious blow to his image as well. For the first time in a decade, the mandate would be held by someone other than Netanyahu. In other words, the power to form a government had just slipped from his hands.