The Likud Party under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's command repelled Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog's legions, which threatened to overrun government headquarters on March 17. This week, as the ministers of the new government hole up in their offices, they will discover that the election campaign was a romantic walk in the park compared to the exhausting battle for survival that awaits them on the road to the next elections. Sixty-one Knesset members from five parties (Netanyahu's coalition) — on the right and the radical right — secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox, will awake each day to a new conflict.

Almost 30 ministers and deputy ministers who will be tied up with the affairs of their ministries and with weekly Cabinet meetings, special Cabinet meetings and ministerial committees, will be confronted by 59 opposition lawmakers who, as one, will constantly try to topple the government. Members of the opposition in the Knesset will devote all their resources to identifying cracks and weaknesses in the unstable wall of the coalition.

The widely publicized and surprising crossing of the lines by Avigdor Liberman to the opposition was by way of a general rehearsal in advance of the show that is about to take Israel by storm. The vast majority of the media portrayed the move by the Yisrael Beitenu leader as a brilliant maneuver. But the compliments dished out by the pundits of the pro-Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom ran the gamut from traitor of the right wing to an accomplice of a putsch.

The protagonists — Netanyahu and his people on one side, and Isaac Herzog and his forces on the other — will compete for the hearts and minds of the Israelis, especially of the Israeli Jews. The "Are you for us or for our enemies?" (Joshua 5:13) motif, which proved successful during the campaign, requires daily nurturing. Sustaining such control requires using both sticks and carrots — to control as broad as possible an array of media.