Despite the prevailing assumption that Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid will fail to form a government and be forced to hand back the mandate when it runs out next week, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did before him, it would be wise to keep an eye on Naftali Bennett in the last few days of Lapid's mandate.
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Because of the operation against Hamas in Gaza and following Arab attacks against Jews in mixed cities, Bennett announced that the option of a "government of change" was off the table. Still, despite his denials, it's not impossible that next week, the possibility will be back on the table, with one clear person responsible: Benjamin Netanyahu.
When the prime minister still had the mandate, he announced that if he had 59 votes for a right-wing government, he would also get 61, and a government would be formed. Bennett's announcement that he was stopping his cooperation with Lapid should have prompted Netanyahu's people to bring Bennett's into the government. That didn't happen. According to the signals received by Yamina leaders, Netanyahu is not benefitting from any Yamina defectors, and New Hope leader Gideon Sa'ar is also refusing to budge.
In addition, the Likud's downgraded invitation to Yamina, without any rotation for prime minister, and the concern that Netanyahu isn't trying at all to form a government but is rather looking to a fifth election, could wind up causing Bennett to slide into an opening that Lapid leaves him at the last minute. It wouldn't be a bad one – prime minister for a year.
One could dismiss Lapid's messages on Monday that he was close to signing a deal with Blue and White, and then Yisrael Beytenu, even before similar announcements are expected about deals with Meretz and Labor, and say that as long as Bennett isn't there, they are meaningless. But once could also understand the shrewdness of the move: closing deals with all the parties in the anti-Netanyahu bloc, and leaving Bennett for last, allowing him to become prime minister by a single vote in the Knesset. It could prove too great a temptation, and besides – the other side doesn't have a government, so what awaits him there is another brutal election campaign, which Bennett would start bruised and battered.
But the biggest wonder is the silence from Sa'ar. Netanyahu and National Religious Party leader Bezalel Smotrich, who were able to operate rabbis, activists, and demonstrations outside the homes of Yamina MKs, haven't lifted a finger when it comes to Sa'ar, Zeev Elkin, or Sharren Haskel – the same MKs they promised to bring into the government, and then didn't keep that promise. If next week Lapid becomes prime minister, it will be largely because of their failure to do anything now.
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