On the night of September 13, on Channel 12, Yoram Cohen said the sentence that may end up mattering more than any of the five polls published the next morning. Cohen — former Shin Bet chief, now the number-two name on Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar list was asked whether his party could ever sit with Likud. His answer wasn’t a refusal. It was a term sheet. “They won’t be the ruling party,” he said, “but they’ll be in the coalition.” Netanyahu, he added, would almost certainly reject the arrangement, though Cohen also noted, almost in passing, that Netanyahu is barred from serving as a minister anyway while under indictment, which makes the objection somewhat beside the point.

I’ve written twice now about this election’s structural story: first, the religious-Zionist right consolidating out of necessity as Smotrich merged with Feiglin to avoid the threshold; then the opposition doing the opposite, splintering as Bennett and Eisenkot chose separate lists rather than one. Cohen’s interview is the piece that was missing. It isn’t Netanyahu, Bennett, or even Eisenkot who is currently........

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