As the Knesset voted unanimously on Wednesday afternoon to dissolve itself and hold Israel’s fifth election in less than four years, there was no smile on Benjamin Netanyahu’s face. The fall of a government is normally a moment of victory for the leader of the opposition. Indeed, he had worked for this moment for the past year and nine days, ever since he was forced to leave the Prime Minister’s chair in the plenum, which he had occupied for over 12 years, and take the more modest desk, where Yair Lapid was still collecting his papers.

But now that it had arrived, he was grappling with a dilemma. All the polls on the television channels the previous night had shown the bloc of parties that supports him winning 59 or 60 seats in the coming election. Just one or two short of a majority. On the face of it, turning those figures into a victory seemed within reach. All it would take would be boosting turnout in Likud strongholds by a fraction, combined perhaps with one of the parties of the opposing bloc slipping under the electoral threshold. Then that majority that eluded him in the four previous elections would finally be in his grasp. But as an inveterate consumer of polls, Netanyahu is aware of just how difficult that will be.

He knows that Israel is still deeply polarised. Despite the unpopularity of the departing government, a small but consistent majority of voters still do not want Netanyahu’s return. His bloc of four parties remains committed to him and none are threatened by the threshold. His opponent Lapid will almost certainly have to work much harder to gain the support of a majority in the next Knesset. But Lapid will be the Prime Minister as he goes into the election. And with the likeliest result just more deadlock, Lapid will remain PM for the time being.

Knesset members of United Torah Judaism have already publicly warned that so far as they are concerned, this is their last election for a while. They’re still supporting Netanyahu this time around, but if he can’t form a coalition, they will consider other candidates and alliances to stave off a sixth election.

Which is why, while he voted in favour of the dissolution bill in its first reading, he made sure that the next and final readings would be postponed to Monday. He was frantically looking for ways to delay the election and form a different government no matter how temporary. Preferably it would have him as prime minister; he was willing to offer the job to someone else, such as Benny Gantz. As long as Mr Lapid would not be interim prime minister going into this election.

The chances of this happening are extremely remote. The four parties of his bloc, Likud, Shas, UTJ and Religious Zionism currently have 54 seats. He can add to that the three existing defectors from Naftali Bennett’s Yamina and possibly add two more potential defectors. He would still need two more. Potentially they could come from Mr Gantz’s Blue and White or Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope, but both party leaders have categorically ruled this out and their members look solid.

Mr Netanyahu’s emissaries will continue their hunt over the weekend for more defectors, but it is highly unlikely they will find the MKs they need for a majority by the crucial dissolution vote on Monday, after which under the terms of the coalition agreement, Mr Lapid, will automatically become prime minister. An election, probably in early November, is now all but inevitable. Mr Netanyahu will have to take his chances.

WHAT NEXT FOR BENNETT?

Those who saw Naftali Bennett when he entered the Prime Minister’s Knesset office on Monday evening, immediately after he announced the coalition’s demise, together with Foreign Minist Yair Lapid, said that “he looked happier than he has in a long while.”

Mr Bennett was preparing himself for this moment for weeks. Earlier this month he said in private that “I no longer have any dilemmas, my conscience is clear. I’m doing now only what I really believe in.”

The past year has profoundly changed the nationalist firebrand. A large part of this he admits was due to the fact that it was the centrist and left-wing members of his coalition who usually proved more pragmatic and prepared to vote against their own positions to keep the government going, than his own right-wing colleagues. It was year in which he says that he “discovered the value of compromise.”

Another thing he says in private is that his opinion of his old boss and predecessor greatly changed. He still admires Mr Netanyahu as a politician and statesman but is no longer convinced that despite their differences he has Israel’s interests at heart. After a year in which he has been the main target of a vicious online campaign and constant jeering by the opposition on the Knesset floor, he feels that Mr Netanyahu has become so embittered by his time on the opposition benches that he will do anything to return to office.

Mr Bennett grew up idolising the former prime minister. As a teenager he admired his speeches as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, he joined the same IDF commando unit that Mr Netanyahu and his brothers served in, and even named one of his sons after the elder Netanyahu brother, Yoni, who was killed in the Entebbe raid. His public career began when he left the tech business to serve, without pay, as Mr Netanyahu’s chief of staff, the previous time he was leader of the opposition.

Emerging from his shadow has been a painful process for him. He still has the power to insult him, as he did when he refused to abide by custom and attend the handover ceremony last year or when he didn’t turn up for the monthly briefings that by law the prime minister is supposed to give to the leader of the opposition.

There are contradicting messages coming from Bennett’s circle over whether he intends to run again in this election or take a break from frontline politics. The latter course is more likely. Yamina no longer exists as a functioning party and, according to the polls, will struggle to cross the electoral threshold. After a year breathing the rarefied air of the Prime Minister’s office, being briefed daily by Mossad and Shabak, the last thing he wants is to return to small-party politics.

In recent weeks he mused about going back into tech, not to make more millions, but to work on combating the spread of “fake news” through social media. He didn’t want it to end this way, certainly not this early, but he seems ready for a change of career.

LAPID’S MANY FACES

“Shabbat Shalom, I’m Yair Lapid and I’m wearing a tie.” That was how the new presenter of Ulpan Shishi (Friday Studio), Israel’s highest-rating weekend news programme, introduced himself back in 2008. All the viewers knew of course who he was. But Mr Lapid was launching himself that night on a new phase in his life, and he was assuming the appearance.

For 20 years, he had styled himself as the Israeli media’s dashing young star, writing popular columns and books and hosting chat shows, with the carefully assembled “informal” costume of black t-shirt, gelled hair and leather jacket. When news broke that he would be anchoring a “serious journalism” programme, there was much speculation over would he ditch his old threads for a suit and tie.

Mr Lapid made the transition without batting an eyelid. Gone was the joking talk-show host, replaced by a hard-hitting broadcaster, who from his first evening on the job, looked like he’d been doing just that his entire career. Just like in every stage of his public life, which began the moment he left the army at 21, when he got a job on the Maariv newspaper, he has been an exercise in meticulously studied images. From iconoclastic journalist to statesman, he has performed all his roles perfectly.

On Tuesday, 10 years and two months since he registered his party, Yesh Atid, and launched his political phase, he will be assuming a new role, as Israel’s 14th prime minister. His many admirers have long seen him as a leader-in-waiting, his critics, of which they are arguably more, always thought there was something too perfect about Mr Lapid’s performances. That he was little more than a façade. A talented but ultimately shallow opportunist.

Those critics, who once included this writer, greatly underestimated Mr Lapid. It was his ability to labouriously study and immerse himself in each new role, that made him capable of becoming the architect of the coalition which finally replaced Mr Netanyahu’s government last year. It is the biggest asset he know has as he prepared for yet another electoral showdown with him, this time as serving prime minister.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid will be serious, civil and courteous to a fault. He will refrain from long-winded speeches and grand rhetoric, though he certainly has the skills for it. Just like he did on Monday when in his joint appearance with Mr Bennett, he made do with a short and gracious farewell to the outgoing prime minister, he will keep a business-like tone throughout the campaign.

Above all, he will stick to the advice he received from his American pollster and campaign guru Mark Mellman, who told him that based on his polling analysis, Israelis now crave above all “normalcy.” For the next four months, his aim is to normalise the idea of him being prime minister.

Yesh Atid’s breakthrough was in the first election it fought in 2013, when it won 19 Knesset seats. It hasn’t surpassed that since. Mr Lapid has never won more than 13% of the electorate. Israeli pollsters call it “Lapid’s ceiling.”

A large majority of Israelis still have trouble swallowing him as a plausible prime minister. One of the factors deciding the upcoming election is whether Mr Lapid can break his ceiling and convince enough Israelis that his act is the real thing.