The reasonable citizen (whether he is a bystander, a reporting journalist, or the chairman of a party in a coalition) sits watching the government collapse and wonders to himself: What exactly is happening, not knowing that the prime minister is already preoccupied with the question of what will happen.
News reports deal with the question of exactly when the coalition will fall. Government ministers witness its de facto collapse every day, but from the perspective of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it has long since collapsed.
This coalition, which was founded only 20 months ago, no longer interests its leader. All of his attention, efforts, and obsessions are already focused on the next coalition that he intends to launch after the next elections.
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Sometime recently, in the seam between the Tishrei holidays and the start of the winter session, Netanyahu buried this coalition. Although he has not yet dissolved it and has not yet fired any of his ministers, in his thoughts, in his state of mind, the switch took place.
To his dismay, the Prime Minister was forced to form this coalition without the Haredi parties. Until the last moment, he fought the evil decree imposed on him by the then "brothers" Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, but in the end, Netanyahu was forced to swallow the dictate and leave out Aryeh Deri, Yaakov Litzman, Moshe Gafni and the rest of their friends.
Why did Netanyahu then fight for the Haredi for weeks? Not because he feared that a government without them would harm the country; on the contrary, as finance minister in Ariel Sharon's government, Netanyahu had already proven that when the Haredi were out, he was eager to cut benefits and promote measures that could not be promoted while they were in.
Netanyahu, a politician from beginning to end, feared breaking the historic alliance: the one that connected the Haredi and the Likud and allowed the right to govern almost continuously since 1977.
And Netanyahu feared the law. In the current term, he has been forced to land the axe on the Haredim time and again. First, when he left them out of the coalition; then when he allowed Finance Minister Lapid to cut the child allowances that are dear to their hearts; and finally, when he was forced to accept Lapid's dictates and support the inclusion of criminal sanctions in the new conscription law. Netanyahu tried with all his might to please the Haredim, but when Lapid threatened, the prime minister was forced to fold.
Netanyahu arrived at this Knesset session with two tough decisions: one, that Lapid would not bend him any further, and the second (which fits well with the first) to restore the alliance with the Haredim in every way possible. This was the moment when the integrity of the current coalition was pushed down Netanyahu's list of priorities in favor of the well-being of the next coalition.
If the prime minister were to receive a guaranteed guarantee now from the leaders of Shas and United Torah Judaism, that they would recommend him for president of the state after the next elections, he would already have dissolved the Knesset.
But until he receives such a promise from them, Netanyahu will do everything in his power to restore their trust in him. Netanyahu knows that the path to a fourth term (and after all, why does a person need a third term if not to prepare the ground for a fourth) lies in healing the rift with the Haredim. When he feared for the integrity of this coalition, he agreed to take dictates from Lapid; now that he fears for the integrity of the next coalition, Netanyahu has once again become the Haredim's good friend.
To the prime minister's right stands Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett. He is now his ally on earth. Together with Netanyahu, Bennett is trying to show Lapid and Tzipi Livni (the movement) the way out, and together with Netanyahu, Bennett is trying to build bridges to the Haredim, in order to ensure right-wing rule in the next Knesset.
In recent weeks, he has managed to somewhat disguise his strong desire for the elections.
But make no mistake: behind every sting about the "doctrine of the concrete", behind every speech about a "government without a right to exist", there is Bennett's strong desire for early elections, from which, according to most polls, he is expected to emerge bigger and stronger.
It is from this very place that he is constantly challenging Netanyahu from the right; and the polls prove that this is exactly what his audience likes. At this rate, Netanyahu, who is trailing behind Bennett and pulling others to the right and initiating artificial crises, may yet see how the man who grew up in his office, and was imposed on him in his government, bypasses him in the elections.
• The writer is Channel 10's political correspondent
