Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been compared in recent days to a high-risk stock. One minute he seems very close to losing his seat; a minute later it seems that he again has succeeded in controlling reality via political acrobatics and finesse.

On May 4, just one week from today, Netanyahu’s mandate to assemble a government expires, and the bitter reality is that the prime minister is blocked from all sides. He does not have a majority to establish a right-wing government, and an atmosphere of change has been circulating in the general public. The big question is: Will a new government headed by Yamina Chairman Naftali Bennett really arise, or is that also only an illusion?

While Netanyahu wages a rear-guard battle, maybe his last, a new government is starting to take shape — one that is ideologically eclectic and strange. Every day, the media reports news regarding projected portfolios in the new so-called “change government,” together with speculation regarding the appointment of left-wing Knesset members to senior ministers. Scenarios that had seemed imaginary and unrealistic only a few weeks ago, such as appointing Labor Chairwoman Meirav Michaeli to justice minister, now suddenly seem within reach.

There is an entire generation of children and adolescents in Israel who have never seen anyone else but Netanyahu as prime minister. From the time he returned to head the government in the spring of 2009, he became unbeatable — even when he was in trouble with the law, he managed to survive and remain in his seat. Netanyahu went through four election campaigns, blocked large forces that tried to unseat him (like the Blue and White party), but like the mythical phoenix, he rose again. His phenomenal ability to survive is due to his popularity regarding the normalization agreements with Arab states, and also because he extricated Israel from COVID-19 via a spectacular vaccine campaign. All these seemed to show that he would somehow succeed again.