In the twenty-first century, the Likud appeared to be the dominant party of government. Under successive Netanyahu administrations, the party garnered 20–30 seats out of 120 in elections. Although this was a poor showing in comparison with 48 seats in its heyday in 1981, the twenty-first-century Likud relied on the fact that smaller parties preferred it to any alternative from the Centre Left. Indeed, in the 2009 election, the Likud was the second-largest party. Yet the smaller Far Right, religious and ethno-nationalist parties projected a greater affinity for Netanyahu than for Tsipi Livni and her Kadima party. Therefore, what mattered was not which party emerged as the largest in any election, but whether it could forge a coalition with other parties – often on the political margins – to create a blocking majority of at least 61 seats.

It had been the Left and socialist Zionism which had built the state and led it to victory in the war of Israel's independence in 1948. Their political hegemony and machismo seemed all-pervading, and the position of their leading party, Ben-Gurion's Mapai, seemed impregnable. Indeed, after Menahem Begin had turned the Irgun Zvai Leumi into the Herut movement for the first Israel election in January 1949, it won a paltry 14 seats out of 120 and emerged as the fourth-largest party. In the subsequent election in 1951, Herut lost half its seats and was on the precipice of oblivion. Despite widespread dissension within Herut and the dropping away of many of its stalwarts, Menahem Begin persevered to build a cluster party of the Right which finally displaced Labour in 1977. Herut became Gahal in 1965, which in turn became the Likud in 1973. Begin succeeded because as the Left fragmented, the Right coalesced.

From 1977, the year of ‘the earthquake’, until 1996, both the Likud and Labour led coalition governments. The dual election for premier as well as for party in 1996 caused a dramatic fragmentation such that the Likud shrank in size. The Likud became dependent on smaller parties on the Far Right to form a government.