On the afternoon of July 15, the cease-fire had definitively collapsed and an endless barrage of Hamas rockets rained down across the length and breadth of Israel. The prime minister’s office was inundated with reports of Likud ministers and Knesset members alike publicly denouncing the prime minister’s decision to accept the cease-fire.

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon was running from one media outlet to the next, arguing that the prime minister was controlled by the left, that he was abandoning the residents of the south and that his policies were anemic. Danon may have been the most outspoken and uninhibited, but he was hardly the only one to complain. Interior Minister Gideon Saar demanded that Netanyahu convene the entire government to debate the cease-fire, while Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz argued that the cease-fire only benefited Hamas, saying, “The missile threat has not been removed, and the leadership of the organization has not been eliminated.”

There has never been anything like this in the history of the Likud Party. Never before has a party head — and a prime minister, no less — become a punching bag in the middle of a military operation, just for the sake of immediate political points. If anyone wanted further proof that the very DNA of the Likud has changed and that the settlers and other groups from the far right are now setting the tone, they got it in the hours immediately following the Cabinet’s decision to accept the cease-fire.

It is no wonder why the prime minister felt in those hours that he was losing control of the Likud and perhaps even of his coalition. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman contributed as well. Ever since he decided to dismantle the partnership between his Yisrael Beitenu faction and Netanyahu’s Likud at the start of Operation Protective Edge, he has been engaged in a political campaign to present the chairman of the Likud as a cowardly and weak leader.