Please welcome the troika that will lead Israel in the coming years: Benjamin Netanyahu, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, identical triplets. They all call the same place home: All three are very affluent, very Ashkenazi, very manly, very modern and all very much pretenders. They share nothing as much in common as being a bunch of phonies. It is the essence of their political existence and the source of their success.

This is the Israeli version of the pop band The Pretenders, this frighteningly homogenous triumvirate that will lead us to war or to peace, to wealth or to poverty, to health or to sickness, to justice or iniquity, and the Israeli peanut gallery is already bursting with applause.

The pretender Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the eldest and most experienced of the threesome, has made the dogma of keeping up appearances his faith. Just like he won't be caught without makeup, neither will he be caught telling the truth. Two states for two peoples, his speech at Bar-Ilan University about a future Palestinian state, his "balconies" housing reform or addressing the needs of the weak – all of it is just rouge and mascara. A secular son of secular parents, he reveres to the Torah as the foundation rock of his state. A democrat and liberal at first glance, he holds international law to be anti-Semitic and democracy treacherous. An avowed patriot, most of his family emigrated and he almost did so himself. He a modern statesman, but who acts in at least one area as if he were a messiah.

But Netanyahu is the old politics, so let's welcome in the new. The pretender Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid in his youth belonged to the social elite and in his adulthood to the economic one. Now he is the leader of the middle class, to which he has never belonged. He who was a courageous soldier fighting from the pages of the army newspaper Bamahane now carries the banner of equality in sharing the burden of military service. The representative of enlightened secularism, he is against the division of Jerusalem (from motives that can only be described as religious). A spokesman of modern Israeliness, he isn't interested in the occupation. A representative of enlightened secularism, he has tied his political fate to that of the representative of dark, religious nationalism.

The pretender Haybayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett is quite similar. The leader of a party of settlers, he achieves the settlement dream from the Tel Aviv suburb of Ra'anana. The leader of a religious party who wears a tiny kippa, his closest political partner is secular. A high-tech businessman, he doesn't recognize the word occupation. A representative of modernity, he also calls in 2013 for the annexation of the West Bank's Area C to Israel. He preaches brotherhood but excludes Arabs, ignores their existence and denies their rights, just like Lapid.

A noisy layer of cellophane covers them all. It is what has bequeathed them with their success. They have no fire burning in their bellies, apart from their own success. This is one of the more discouraging characteristics of the 19th Knesset: Among all its leading personages there is not a single one with fire in their belly, except with respect to their own careers. In the new politics even "love of the Land of Israel," the laundered name of nationalism, no longer glows like it once did in the past.

How fitting are these pretenders, who follow the lead of the opinion polls and whose livelihood is based on dealing in junk? Just bring them some good opinion polls and sympathetic victory photos, and to hell with brave and truthful positions that are likely to exact a price. Now there will be a government without Haredim, with no ministers without portfolio and without an extra table on the Knesset floor – and with, most importantly, victory photos.

Lapid in the Foreign Ministry? That might attract criticism. Equality in sharing the civic burden? More victory photos.

Look at how the ongoing coalition negotiations were handled and around what they were focused. They dealt with the most trifling of trifles, but only those that would arouse public sympathy. Does anyone know what the new government will do in the most fateful areas: peace, war, Iran, the budget, education or health? Not a thing. It's enough to have a victory photo with 20 ministers.

But the public sings and dances. At long last there is a government without Haredim, at long last a "civilian" agenda. Along the main thoroughfare of Ramat Hasharon (and places like it) the residents will especially rejoice: We have pushed those pestering sectors out of the picture. There will be a government without (almost) any Jews of Middle Eastern descent, without (almost) any women, without Haredim and without Arabs – and the fates of the Palestinians and the African migrants aren't even on the table for discussion.

It's a party for Israel's Ashkenazi Jews, the sated and contented, waiting for Lapid's "reforms" while standing next to a keg of gunpowder. It would only take one spark from a cigar to set it alight.