One of the challenges of holding elections during a war is that every major decision made in the war’s context becomes suspect. Was the decision based on strategic merit – or on political calculation?

That doesn’t mean elections shouldn’t take place during wartime. But it does mean that decisions, especially life-and-death ones, will be scrutinized not only for their outcomes but also for their motivations.

If early elections are called, a likelihood that increased over the last week over the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) conscription issue, this suspicion won’t hover only over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will be making wartime decisions while campaigning to remain in office. It will also apply to those vying to replace him – none more so than Avigdor Liberman.

Liberman, head of Yisrael Beytenu, has never hidden his ambition to be prime minister. And in an interview Friday in a Maariv Online podcast, he all but declared that his time is now.

 “I see myself as the most legitimate candidate, more than legitimate, with the most impressive experience in the current political system – the most senior, the most seasoned,” he said, ticking off posts he’s held: finance minister, foreign minister, defense minister, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair, and director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Yisrael Beiteinu party chairman MK Avigdor Lieberman leads a faction meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, on May 5, 2025. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH 90)
Yisrael Beiteinu party chairman MK Avigdor Lieberman leads a faction meeting at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, on May 5, 2025. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH 90)

Liberman revealed that Israel was arming the Yasser Abu Shabab clan in Rafah

In short, he’s done it all. Now he wants the top job. And in pursuit of that goal, Liberman’s political moves – including controversial ones – must be read through the lens of strategy.

Like the bombshell he dropped last week.

On Wednesday, Liberman revealed that Israel was arming the Yasser Abu Shabab clan in Rafah – part of an Israeli policy to empower anti-Hamas elements in Gaza. The weapons were reportedly captured from Hamas and transferred to the group that in the past had ties to ISIS in Sinai.

The immediate reaction was disbelief. Israel, handing over arms to a criminal gang? Have we learned nothing from the Phalangists in Lebanon, or from helping build up Hamas in the 1980s to counterbalance Fatah?But Liberman’s leak didn’t come out of nowhere. It was precise, timed, and explosive.

It’s not that Liberman lacked the judgment to understand the consequences. On the contrary, he has too much experience not to understand them. He knew full well that once the information was made public, continuing the policy – endorsed by senior defense and intelligence officials – would become much more difficult, if not nearly impossible.

So why leak it?

Perhaps he genuinely believes the policy is a mistake, that relying on “the enemy of my enemy” never ends well. But there’s another possibility: that the leak was politically motivated, aimed at portraying Netanyahu as reckless, especially with elections in the air.

After all, Liberman has long accused Netanyahu of prolonging the war – in fact, a willingness to do almost anything – to avoid elections and remain in power.

But if Netanyahu is guilty of making decisions through a political lens, is Liberman innocent of the same accusation?Liberman’s political timing has always been sharp. In 2018, he resigned as defense minister in Netanyahu’s government over disagreements on Gaza policy – he wanted a more aggressive policy toward Hamas – triggering the collapse of the government and launching the country into its prolonged cycle of elections.

A broader secular-nationalist party, with a clear anti-haredi identity

 In 2019, he refused to join a Netanyahu-led coalition that included the haredi parties, largely because he did not want to see proposed legislation regarding haredi conscription watered down during the coalition negotiations with the ultra-Orthodox parties.

That decision marked a turning point, not just for Liberman but for Yisrael Beytenu. From that moment, the party transitioned from a sectoral faction representing Russian-speaking immigrants to a broader secular-nationalist party with a clear anti-haredi identity.

In the April 2019 elections, the first of the head-spinning five-election cycle from 2019-2022, Liberman barely crossed the electoral threshold with five seats. But his refusal to enter a coalition without haredi conscription reforms gave him leverage and a cause.

In the September 2019 election, he doubled down on the issue,  running on a “secular Right” platform and calling for a national unity government “without haredim and without ‘messianics (extremists)’.” Even though Liberman was largely responsible for the country going to elections just five months after the last election, his party jumped to eight seats, confirming that the anti-haredi message had political traction.

Since then, and well before October 7, Liberman positioned himself as the loudest voice opposing haredi political power – calling for civil marriage, public transportation on Shabbat, and full conscription, the last position surging in popularity since October 7.

Liberman’s supporters see him as the champion of secular Israelis frustrated by religious coercion and tired of carrying the country’s security burden alone with the religious Zionists; his critics see him as an opportunist fueling division.

Either way, the brand stuck. When Liberman joined the Bennett–Lapid government in 2021 as finance minister, he used his position to try to slash funding to haredi yeshivot, cut stipends, and push through budgetary reforms that the ultra-Orthodox parties vehemently opposed.

Now, amid a growing public backlash against haredi draft exemptions, Liberman’s positioning looks prescient. According to a Maariv poll on Friday, if elections were held today and Naftali Bennett does not re-enter politics, Yisrael Beytenu could become the second-largest party, with 19 seats just behind the Likud’s 22.

 If Bennett does run, which he almost certainly will, Liberman’s party drops from the country’s second-largest party to its fourth, but still significantly increases its strength, rising from six seats in the current Knesset to 10.It’s little wonder, therefore, that Liberman sees this moment as his best shot in his long race to the top. His Friday interview was full of confidence – and calculation. He’s betting that Israelis will want experience. That they’ll reward someone with a long track record in security, diplomacy, and government.But that assumption is far from guaranteed.

After October 7, many Israelis are disillusioned not just with Netanyahu but with the entire establishment – the politicians, generals, and intelligence chiefs who failed to prevent the massacre and then failed to own up to it. Liberman, for all his outsider branding, has been part of that establishment for three decades. And while he quit over Gaza policy in 2018, he has also long been one of the country’s most divisive political voices – first targeting Arab Israelis, and more recently targeting haredim.

His critics won’t ignore that.

Elections may not yet be officially declared – and, in the end, they might not even happen, and a way may still be found to keep the haredi parties in the coalition – but they’re already in the air. Just ask Yossi Cohen, the former Mossad chief now openly preparing to launch a political party – an unmistakable sign that the race has effectively begun.

Liberman can feel it too. His actions suggest he’s not just preparing for elections, he is laying the groundwork for his own political advantage.

Yet in doing so, he is engaging in the very kind of politics he so often accuses Netanyahu of practicing: leveraging war and playing with fire for political gain. By revealing sensitive security information to score political points, Liberman has demonstrated that the hunger for power – and the willingness to manipulate wartime decisions for electoral advantage – is hardly confined to the prime minister.