OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel's opposition leader
moved closer to unseating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he officially
told the country's president that he has reached agreements with political
allies to form a new government.
اضافة اعلان
About 35 minutes before a Wednesday midnight deadline, the
centrist Yair Lapid told President Reuven Rivlin in an email: "I am
honored to inform you that I have succeeded in forming a government."
Rivlin, attending Israel's soccer cup final at the time,
congratulated Lapid by phone, according to his office.
Lapid's main partner is nationalist Naftali Bennett, who
would serve as prime minister first under a rotation between the two men.
Lapid, 57, a former TV host and finance minister, would take over after about
two years.
Their coalition government would comprise a patchwork of
small and medium parties from across the political spectrum, including for the
first time in Israel's history a party that represents Israel's 21 percent Arab
minority — the United Arab List.
It would also include Bennett's Yamina (Rightward), center-left
Blue and White, headed by Defense Minister Benny Gantz, the left-wing Meretz
and Labor parties, former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman's nationalist
Yisrael Beitenu party and New Hope, a right-wing party headed by former
education minister Gideon Saar, who broke away from Netanyahu's Likud.
But the fragile new government, which would command a
razor-thin majority in parliament, was only expected to be sworn in about 10-12
days from now, leaving slight room for Netanyahu's camp to try and abort it by
turning lawmakers over to their side and vote against it.
Israeli political analysts widely expected Netanyahu to try
every possible political maneuver to make this happen, seizing upon Yamina
members who are unhappy about joining forces with Arab and leftist lawmakers.
"Calm down. Netanyahu’s still prime minister for a few
more days until the confidence vote and he's going to fight every inch of the
way to deny the new government its wafer-thin majority. This is still very far
from over," Anshel Pfeffer, political analyst for the liberal Haaretz
newspaper, wrote on Twitter.
Netanyahu, who has yet to respond to Lapid's announcement,
controls 30 seats in the 120-member Knesset, almost twice as many as Lapid's
Yesh Atid party, and he is allied with at least three other religious and
nationalist parties.
'Great hope'
During a 12-year run in top office, Israel's longest serving
leader has been an often polarizing figure at home and abroad.
Netanyahu, 71, has sought to discredit the Bennett-Lapid
alliance, saying it would endanger Israel's security — an allusion to efforts to
curb Iran's nuclear program and manage ever-fraught Palestinian ties.
Lapid, a centrist, was given the task of forming a governing
coalition after right-wing Netanyahu failed to do so in the wake of a March 23
election. He campaigned under a pledge to "return sanity" to Israel,
focusing on Netanyahu's corruption trial on charges which he denies.
"This government will work for all Israel's citizens,
those who voted for it and those who did not. It will respect its opponents and
do all it can to unites and connect all parts of Israeli society," Lapid
said on Twitter.
The new government, if it is sworn in, will face
considerable diplomatic, security, and economic challenges: Iran, the moribund
peace process with the Palestinians, a war crimes probe by the International
Criminal Court, and economic recovery following the coronavirus pandemic.
A source involved in the coalition talks said the proposed
new government would try to retain consensus by avoiding hot-button ideological
issues such as whether to annex or cede occupied West Bank territory that belongs
to Palestinians.
Bennett has said that both sides would have to compromise on
such ideological issues in order to get the country back on track, with
government debt at 72.4 percent in 2020, up from 60 percent in 2019 and the
deficit jumping to 11.6 percent in 2020 from 3.7 percent in 2019.
"This is a night of great hope," Gantz, who will
remain in office under the coalition agreements, said on Twitter as he set out
on a trip to Washington in the aftermath of 11 days of fierce fighting with Hamas
in Gaza last month and as world powers press on in reviving a nuclear deal with
Iran.
An end to Netanyahu's tenure may bring reprieve from
unprecedented domestic political turmoil, Israel has held four elections in two
years — but major shifts in Israel's foreign policy appear less likely.
After Lapid's announcement, a few dozen activists from the
protest movement against Netanyahu broke out in cheers. "He's finished,
he's finished, yalla Bibi, go," they chanted outside a bar in Tel Aviv,
referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
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