While there is much about the new prime minister Naftali Bennett that is unusual—the small size of his party, the parliamentary gridlock that preceded his formation of the government, the heterogeneity of the coalition he leads—perhaps most noteworthy is that he is the first religiously observant head of Israel’s government. Oddly, his victory signals a loss for both the ḥaredi parties and for the Religious Zionist party that Bennett himself once led, albeit under a different name. Bennett’s chief coalition partner, who will succeed him in two years per a rotation agreement, is Yair Lapid—the embodiment of the secular, liberal Tel Aviv elite. Likewise his other partners include two secular left-wing parties and an avowedly secular right-wing party; the only other religious party in the government is Muslim.

Oren Kessler, writing before Bennett was confirmed in his position, considers the significance of Israel’s first kippah-clad chief executive:

Prime Minister Bennett represents the mainstreaming of religion in the state of Israel’s 73rd year. He aims to unite right and left, devout and secular, the hills of Samaria with the country’s high-tech center. He has long believed religious and right-wing Israelis are the silenced majority, their voices obstructed by left-wing elites in media, the courts, and academia. But he favors honey to vinegar; he wants to bring [the religious West Bank community of] Tekoa to Tel Aviv. If in the process the country’s face becomes a little more religious, a little more right-wing, so much the better.

But [his selection as prime minister] represents a broader acceptance in Israel of religion’s growing presence in the public square. Lapid’s late father headed a party whose core platform was protecting secularism and combating [what it believed to be] religious coercion; as recently as the early 2000s it was the third-largest faction in parliament.

Much water has flown since then, to borrow a Hebrew expression. There were the grim years of the second intifada, the 2005 pullout from Gaza and the surge in rockets that followed, and the crashing failure of the Oslo Accords’ two-state vision. There is no straight or direct line leading from these developments to a Bennett premiership, but there is the feeling, deep and wide across the country, that the future promised by Israel’s historically secular, center-left leadership has proved a mirage.

“I don’t support religious coercion, but I do believe that Judaism is our ‘why;’ Judaism is the reason for our existence and the justification for our existence, and the meaning of our existence,” he once told the liberal journalist Ari Shavit.

Earlier this month, an operative working for, or in conjunction with, Hizballah snuck across the Israel-Lebanese border and planted a sophisticated explosive near the town of Megiddo, which killed a civilian when detonated. On Thursday, another Iranian proxy group launched a drone at a U.S. military base in Syria, killing a contractor and wounding five American soldiers. The former attack appears to be an attempt to change what Israeli officials and analysts call the “rules of the game”: the mutually understood redlines that keep the Jewish state and Hizballah from going to war. Nadav Pollak explains how he believes Jerusalem should respond:

Israel cannot stop at pointing fingers and issuing harsh statements. The Megiddo attack might have caused much more damage given the additional explosives and other weapons the terrorist was carrying; even the lone device detonated at Megiddo could have easily been used to destroy a larger target such as a bus. Moreover, Hizballah’s apparent effort to test (or shift) Jerusalem’s redlines on a dangerous frontier needs to be answered. If [the terrorist group’s leader Hassan] Nasrallah has misjudged Israel, then it is incumbent on Jerusalem to make this clear.

Unfortunately, the days of keeping the north quiet at any cost have passed, especially if Hizballah no longer believes Israel is willing to respond forcefully. The last time the organization perceived Israel to be weak was in 2006, and its resultant cross-border operations (e.g., kidnapping Israeli soldiers) led to a war that proved to be devastating, mostly to Lebanon. If Hizballah tries to challenge Israel again, Israel should be ready to take strong action such as targeting the group’s commanders and headquarters in Lebanon—even if this runs the risk of intense fire exchanges or war.

Relevant preparations for this option should include increased monitoring of Hizballah officials—overtly and covertly—and perhaps even the transfer of some military units to the north. Hizballah needs to know that Israel is no longer shying away from conflict, since this may be the only way of forcing the group to return to the old, accepted rules of the game and step down from the precipice of a war that it does not appear to want.