In an Aug. 7 article, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed himself to only forming a right-wing government after the Sept. 17 elections, declaring that he would not consider a national unity government. “This is my commitment to Likud voters,” he wrote in Israel Today, the pro-Netanyahu freebie. The column represents Netanyahu's attempt to derail the unity government train headed his way, driven at full speed by Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman.

Despite various plans and machinations by Netanyahu, Liberman’s engine is not running out of steam. In fact, the opposite is happening: The train being pulled by the engine is gaining speed, forming an existential threat to Netanyahu’s government. There is, however, one caveat: This scenario is based on the assumption that Liberman and Netanyahu are not secretly in cahoots to make a mockery of Israel’s entire political system.

With the promise not to create a unity government, Netanyahu is attempting to dismantle the process shaping up to bring an end to his time at the helm once and for all. One simple fact casts a shadow over his efforts: He failed at the task of forming a government with the current Knesset, in which the right-wing bloc won 60 seats (excluding Liberman's party). Those results were not enough for Netanyahu to form a majority government of at least 61 members of the Knesset.

The polls currently predict that in the next Knesset, the right-wing bloc will number only 54 or 55 mandates. What will Netanyahu do if he does not have enough votes to assemble a right-wing government? He will most certainly try to cobble together a unity government, and so long as he heads it, there's no problem as far as he’s concerned. If someone else gets the reins, however, the Netanyahu era will soon come to a close.