Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was in a good mood when he arrived at his office July 11. Israel’s top political commentators were effusive in their praise about the way he was functioning in his new office. They commended him for his secret meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, which was first revealed to the public July 8, and noted how it signaled a warming of the relationship between the two countries. Bennett could also chalk up a victory for the way he boosted the coronavirus vaccine supply from Pfizer after clinching a deal with Pfizer CEO Albert Burla the night before. This was especially significant, given how former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used to boast about his good relationship with Burla, and how that enabled Israel to become the first country in the world to achieve mass vaccination.

All in all, everything seemed to be working out. Bennett was finally breaking away from the ominous shadow of his predecessor. Then reality hit him in the face. Suddenly he was forced to contend with his new government. Once it was stripped of all the glittery packaging, the coalition turned out to be much more complicated than he imagined, and far less stable too.

A single tweet by Ra’am party Knesset member Waleed Taha set Bennett and his team into a frenzy. “I informed the coalition that Ra’am’s Knesset delegation will not participate in committee meeting discussions and will not vote on legislation in the plenum until further notice!” said Taha, who chairs the party's Knesset faction. This was a very public warning that showed that listing his party's grievances behind closed doors would not suffice.

The background behind Ra’am’s growing rage was how the coalition was treating the party. Most of all, it was annoyed by the way the government had been approaching the opposition, particularly the Arab Joint List, asking for it to provide a political safety net in exchange for benefits for Arab society. Ra’am and the Joint List are bitter rivals within the Arab sector. There has been a lot of bad blood between them since Ra’am broke away from the Joint List right before the last election. Now it looked like the coalition was favoring Ra'am's rival over Ra'am itself.