After a long promo and rising expectations, the perfect storm is finally upon us. On Nov. 20, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz returned his mandate to President Reuven Rivlin and became the third politician in all of Israel’s history who was unable to fulfill the task of forming a new government (the other two being Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leader of the defunct Kadima party Tzipi Livni). Israel is now closer than ever to an inconceivable downturn in its history, with a third election in less than a year. Meanwhile, the security situation is heating up — the air force launched an extensive attack against Syrian and Iranian targets on the night of Nov. 18-19 — and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit is about to charge Netanyahu with assorted crimes. There is no solution in sight to the political situation, and there is no Israeli Alexander the Great to slice through this Gordian knot in a single blow to free Israel from this tailspin.

“As strange as it may seem, one of the people most responsible for Netanyahu’s troubles is head of the Hamas political bureau Ismail Haniyeh,” a senior figure in the Likud told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. His reasoning is quite simple: Just before he was appointed to be Netanyahu’s defense minister, Avigdor Liberman announced in May 2016 that if he was given the job, he would tell Haniyeh that he has 48 hours to return the bodies of Israel’s fallen soldiers and abducted citizens, or he will be assassinated. This promise followed Liberman around like an explosive boomerang from the moment he took the post. Haniyeh is alive and well, at least until now, while Liberman, whose brand was, “My word is my word,” found himself battered and humiliated by every outcast and misfit in the political system and on social media.

Since he resigned from his post as defense minister in November 2018, he has stood by his promises as firmly as a rock and has kept his every word. Liberman has managed to shift his image quickly so that he is now seen as, “Mr. My Word Is My Word” — at Netanyahu’s expense.

The entire political system held its breath Nov. 20, as it waited for 1:00 p.m., when Liberman was scheduled to announce the fates of Netanyahu and Gantz. Unlike so many assessments, he did not make a U-turn and return to Netanyahu’s embrace. He might even be said to have done the exact opposite of that. At the same time, he did not break left and make his way to Gantz. The cost of such a sharp turn was too much to bear, even for him. He could not allow the creation of a government with the votes of at least four Arab Knesset members, even if they only supported it from the outside. For the past few weeks, Liberman was under enormous pressure from both sides. He was torn between conflicting passions and ambitions. On the one hand, there was the loathing he had come to feel toward Netanyahu and the enormous efforts he had invested in freeing Israel from Netanyahu’s leadership. On the other hand, there was his historic and insurmountable revulsion for the Arab members of Knesset, whom he refers to as a “fifth column” every chance he gets.