The coronavirus epidemic could not have erupted at a more opportune time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It turned him, once again, into the father of the Israeli nation, its supreme leader and national physician. No one knows whether this epidemic is a 21st century global apocalypse, as Netanyahu described the state of affairs on a special March 12 primetime address to the nation. What has been clear for quite some time is that the coronavirus has provided Netanyahu with powerful leverage he is using to dismantle the opposition by half the Israeli electorate to a government under his leadership.

In recent days, Netanyahu has faced the cameras every evening in time for the primetime news, teaching Israelis basic rules of hygiene, using amateur video clips to show how particles are sprayed by a sneeze and a tissue to demonstrate the correct way to catch them. The gig Netanyahu has taken on as national health czar is working. He is fostering an addiction and the public is going along, convinced that without Netanyahu, we are all lost.

In the evening hours of March 12, the time was ripe for a political bomb and Netanyahu dropped it skillfully with the right timing. As he was winding down his daily health update, he called for the immediate formation of an emergency unity government. Such a government, he said, would be limited in time. Don’t worry, he added, smiling, we will be able to pick up exactly where we left off before this crisis erupted.

Netanyahu has set a sophisticated honey trap to bait leaders of the centrist Blue and White party. As soon as they walk into it, they will discover that they are negotiating a minefield, a deadly arena of explosive devices from which there is no honorable way out. Netanyahu had been projecting supreme self-confidence in recent days in light of the obstacles being piled on Blue and White’s path to a minority government backed by the Arab parties. First to desert was Knesset member Orly Levy-Abekasis of the joint Labor-Gesher-Meretz ticket who announced she would not vote for such a government. She was followed by two Blue and White Knesset members — former Netanyahu aides Zvi Hauser and Yoaz Hendel, who also refused to support such a Benny Gantz-led government. Loss of these three crucial votes supposedly doomed prospects of a minority government. Nonetheless, Blue and White forged ahead with its offensive despite these setbacks. Its goal was to get the go-ahead from President Reuven Rivlin next week to try and form a new government, to replace Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein of Netanyahu’s Likud party with one of its own — Knesset member Meir Cohen — and to initiate legislation barring a politician under criminal indictment from heading a government.