“The state is on the backburner today because [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is busy with other issues. Netanyahu thinks first and foremost about his trial. Yalla (Let’s go) Fauda!” That was the main headline of Monday’s edition of Yedioth Ahronot. It was a direct quote from Minister of Defense and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz.

It was not by chance that the former chief of staff chose to use the term “Fauda” — Arabic for "chaos" and the name of the most successful Israeli TV series in the world. “Fauda” was the code word used by the Israel Defense Force’s Mista’arvim unit (the undercover counterterrorism unit) operating in the West Bank when locals discovered them. At the advice of his media consultants, Gantz used the term in an attempt to show a more aggressive attitude toward Netanyahu, believing that this might help him win back voters who abandoned him for joining forces with Netanyahu in the first place.

Even if it was just a tactical measure, targeting the media, the very fact that the defense minister would say something that harsh about the prime minister and compare their work together to a deadly battlefield is anything but normal. In this case, “Fauda” was Gantz’s political declaration of war and a signal that he has come to accept the idea that a new election is inevitable. All signs seem to indicate that Israel will be headed to a fourth round of elections this March and that nothing short of a miracle could prevent this from happening.

A closer look at the lives of Gantz and Netanyahu during the first two days of this week offers a dismal picture of how the government is functioning. More than that, it shows that there is an unprecedented crisis in the country’s leadership. Nothing like that has ever happened before.