Israel’s parliamentary system remains resilient despite a volatile political climate in which governments regularly confront crises and subsequent legislative efforts to consolidate fractious parties and change how leaders are elected. The current system is unlikely to change, however, even though nearly half of Israel’s parliamentarians are new, ambitious and reform minded. This paper is animated by a series of interlocking questions and puzzles about the rise of new elites and continuity of the Knesset as a mainstay in Israeli politics. What explains the electoral success of a new breed of politicians who lacked legislative experience and backing of traditional parties? Why have their starkly divergent views on domestic and foreign policy issues not transformed the Knesset into a weak squabbling body? Why have parliamentarians who campaigned on themes of change so far played by the rules of the game and not pursued fundamental government reform? The principal argument is that the inclusion and cooptation of a “new guard” has opened new channels of both dissent and patronage. This argument is based on Vilfredo Pareto’s conception of elite circulation and his theoretical insight that the lack of social mobility among the governing elite causes a degeneration of a regime’s political structures. This paper seeks to show how this injection of “new blood” into the Knesset helps preserve the country’s parliamentary system. In this light, it touches on the rise of “new elites” elsewhere in the Middle East in order to generalize about political change and regime resilience in a broader regional perspective. The paper is based on original research in Israel from July 2012 to July 2014. The author conducted dozens of interviews with Members of Knesset across the political spectrum.