The results of the March 2 elections spell only one logical outcome: a national unity government with a rotation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be named the prime minister for the first two years in the rotation – under a prolonged recusal until his trial concludes – while Blue and White leader Benny Gantz should be named prime minister for the latter two years of the rotation.
The Likud will not agree to form a government without the ultra-Orthodox parties, which is why Yisrael Beytenu will probably not join it. Whether we like it or not, the haredi parties will form the axis of this government. Netanyahu and Gantz will have to read the rules created in 1984 to establish a rotation government between Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir and follow their lead.
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It will not be simple and it will most likely be unpleasant. Both prime ministers will have to swallow bitter pills when their policies bids are rejected, no matter how convinced they are that they are right, but the option of holding a fourth round of elections is unthinkable.
The leaders of the Blue and White party have to do some serious soul-searching. The alchemy that inspired the coming together of the Israel Resilience, Yesh Atid, and Telem parties and allowed it to miraculously succeed twice, but not a third time.
The decision not to establish a rotational government under the far more favorable political conditions that followed the September 2017 vote, as President Reuven Rivlin proposed will go down as one of the most egregious mistakes in Israeli politics, even if it can fall under "rookie mistakes."
I suppose Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman, who has been manipulating all of us for the past year and has not done well in the third vote, will have a stern talking-to with himself over leading the political system in the opposite direction than he planned.
The Joint Arab List, for its part, continues to grow strong. If a unity government is formed, this would effectively make its leader, Ayman Odeh, the opposition leader and as such he would be privy to various updates, including on sensitive security issues. In the past, Odeh has hinted he has no interest in such a role, but relinquishing it would be a serious mistake of self-exclusion.
A politician who is unwilling to partake in any coalition nor head the opposition turns his back on his constituents and sides with those who want to see Arab Israelis as second-class citizens.
