Until Thursday, the conventional wisdom was that the April 9 election will revolve around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's legal fate and his possible indictment.
But the decision of Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid and Israel Resilience Party chief Benny Gantz to run on a joint ticket made Netanyahu's credentials the most dominant campaign issue.
Ever since he returned to power in 2009, Netanyahu has managed to pursue policies that have defied the national security establishment, the legal elites, the intellectuals and the mainstream media.
He has promoted an alternative agenda that has proven itself on all major issues, and chief among them, Iran.
His policy toward the Palestinians gave the Right the most relevant political ideology and turned it into the most potent political force.
Without Netanyahu, the results of the Oslo Accords and the Disengagement Plan would have relegated the Right to a footnote in history.
His overall economic and diplomatic policies have been a clear alternative to the malignant dependency on successive U.S. administrations and put the Palestinians on the defensive.
Throughout his premiership, the military establishment has tried to force Netanyahu to march down a different path.
Practically every senior defense or intelligence official supported the Iran nuclear deal Barack Obama struck with the ayatollahs, which led to Iranian troops on our northern border.
Lapid warned Netanyahu not to confront the Obama administration and tried to convince America to pressure the Israeli government
Obama often justified his moves by citing Israeli national security officials.
Gantz can try all he wants to cast Netanyahu as weak on defense but this falls flat.
Netanyahu is the only political leader who can defy the national security establishment on cardinal issues such as when it is right to go to war.
The price Israel pays for failed diplomacy and misguided security policy is much greater – and much bloodier – than the price it pays for ignoring diplomatic pressure.
If Israel was to pursue the policy favored by the defense establishment, it would have had terrorists lurking just off Ben-Gurion International Airport.
The Gantz-Lapid unity ticket puts on the table two alternative paths for Israelis to choose from. The Right's hands are tied because attacking Gantz and the other two former Israel Defense Forces chiefs on the ticket will be interpreted as an attack on the troops.
But they do not represent the troops, they represent the military leadership that has lost its way. Gantz and Lapid believe everything is fair game when attacking Netanyahu.
Gantz has even accused Netanyahu of evading military service for not returning to Israel during the First Lebanon War, ignoring the fact that Netanyahu served in the elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal and did return from the U.S. to fight in the brutal Yom Kippur War.
This campaign is going to get interesting. Gantz will try to ignore the attacks he might face from fringe parties and stick to the strategy of uniting against Netanyahu.
He and his allies don't trust the attorney general to topple Netanyahu for them.
