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Comment and Opinion

Times of Israel: Let me get on with my job: How Netanyahu dwarfed his political enemies within, by David Horovitz

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Liberman was savoring the anticipated revival of his fortunes; Bennett was sure he was onto a win-win. The prime minister had other ideas.

It was over for Benjamin Netanyahu.

He’d agreed on an informal truce with Hamas after 500 rockets had been fired at Israel, and his defense minister, the volatile Avigdor Liberman, had resigned in a seething firestorm of anger and recrimination. Two of his more quiescent coalition partners, Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu and Aryeh Deri’s Shas, had concluded that the coalition, now reduced to 61 of the 120 Knesset seats, could no longer function effectively and were calling for elections. And his most irritating rival, the Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett, was threatening to pull his eight-member party out of the government unless he was appointed defense minister, making elections in the spring — six months or more ahead of schedule — unavoidable.

Read more at Times of Israel.