Hope—because for two years, the Likud machine was exclusively calibrated to fight the previous front-runner, Naftali Bennett, constantly battling over the right-wing votes he supposedly brought as his political dowry. Apprehension—because Eisenkot and Liberman will be much harder to dismantle.

Bennett and Lapid are familiar foes — the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Israeli politics — complete with a heavily loaded archive of past missteps to exploit. But the Likud has repeatedly failed in its attempts to push Liberman below the electoral threshold, and Eisenkot arrives with a record free of political zigzagging and a biography of service that makes him very difficult to attack.

The working assumption within the Likud is that the ultimate rival for the premiership will be Gadi Eisenkot. Perhaps this is why the anti-Bibi “Change Bloc” is in a relentless frenzy of recruiting, mergers and acquisitions, while on the right, there is nothing new.