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A new Israeli government is set to oust Benjamin Netanyahu from office on Sunday with the primary aim of ousting the country’s longest-serving leader.
A diverse group of politicians, including former allies-turned-enemies of Netanyahu, have put aside bitter differences to put an end to the prime minister’s historic path to power. If successful, it would also break the political deadlock that has seen four snap elections in the country since 2019.
“The political establishment in Israel is embarking on a new path, after two and a half years of irresponsible drift from one election to the next, after 12 years in which someone has pulled all political oxygen out of the room,” wrote a columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth, last week.
A vote on the new government of opposition leader Yair Lapid is set to take place in the Knesset on Sunday afternoon, where he hopes to win a slim majority of 61 out of 120 seats – barring any last-minute surprises.
Under the power-sharing agreement, Lapid will not be sworn in as prime minister immediately. Instead, far-right politician Naftali Bennett, whose support has been seen as vital to the coalition’s success, will become Israel’s leader for two years, after which he will hand Lapid over for the second half of a four-year term.
Bennett is a religious nationalist and a strong advocate of the settlement movement in the Palestinian territories. He will lead an unexpected assortment of eight parties, including the anti-occupation Meretz and the doves, as well as parties led by other hardline figures on the right, such as Moldovan-born settler Avigdor Lieberman.
Crucially, the coalition includes Arab Islamist deputies in parliament, who have joined for the common goal of deposing “King Bibi,” as Netanyahu is known. In doing so, the United Arab List, made up of Palestinian citizens of Israel, would become the first party from the country’s large Arab minority ever to join the government.
Right-winger Naftali Bennett, who could become Israel’s prime minister on Sunday. Photo: Menachem Kahane/AFP/Getty Images
The party’s leader, Mansour Abbas, is seen as a pragmatist and said he has secured guarantees from hard-right coalition partners for greater rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, including discriminatory housing policies, as well as several billion pounds for infrastructure in Arab countries. Regions.
A coalition agreement, finalized on Friday, showed the new government would focus mostly on economic and social issues, such as passing the state budget and building new hospitals, rather than risk internal fighting by trying to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, Bennett will have executive powers as prime minister to further the occupation.
Crucially, the agreements indicated that the new government could introduce legislation limiting any prime minister to eight years in office, which could advance Netanyahu’s plans to run for office in the future.
In power for 15 years – from 1996 to 1999, and then since 2009 – Netanyahu has been desperately trying to spoil the deal by his opponents, which could threaten not only his political life, but also his freedom.
The 71-year-old is battling three corruption cases on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust, which he denies. If he were to go into opposition, he might be denied parliamentary immunity.
Netanyahu’s efforts to split the fragile coalition will likely continue even once he takes power – a move that could lead to another snap election and possibly save his career.
In a week of exasperation before the vote, Netanyahu accused Bennett of betraying right-wing voters by joining a coalition of what Netanyahu describes as the weakness of Jewish “leftists” and Arab politicians he paints as a potential fifth column.
Speaking to local TV Channel 20 last week, Netanyahu claimed: “They are uprooting the good and replacing it with the wicked and the dangerous.” He added, “I fear for the fate of the nation.”
His supporters organized angry rallies outside the homes of lawmakers joining the new government, and many members of the new administration were assigned bodyguards.
Some Israelis have drawn comparisons to the outrage that led to the revolt in the US Capitol in January, or the agitation closer to home before the assassination of former Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin by a far-right nationalist in 1995.
The embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is still trying to slash the coalition aimed at ousting him. Photo: Ariel Shalit/Associated Press
Netanyahu’s Likud party sought to assuage rising fears by declaring on Twitter in English: “There is also no doubt about the peaceful transition of power.”
The new coalition enjoys wide support in the Israeli press. David Horowitz, editor of The Times of Israel, wrote: “Never before in the history of this country have rightists and leftists, centrists and Arabs come together to find common ground, together in government, for the common good of Israel.”
The Palestinians welcomed Netanyahu’s departure. But there is little optimism about a government led by Bennett, the former leader of the Jewish settler group in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s political demise will see the departure of ultra-Orthodox Jewish politicians, who have become deeply entangled in the prime minister’s political bloc.
Alliance leader Lapid, and his opponent turned ally of Lieberman, are both loyal secularists. They campaigned to limit the influence of ultra-Orthodox factions, which have long maintained expensive government salaries that allow religious communities to study rather than work.
Faced with the prospect of losing their positions alongside their patron, ultra-Orthodox politicians launched sermon after sermon against the new government, warning that it threatened the Jewish state.
“This left-wing government will visit a spiritual holocaust for the Jewish people, here in the Land of Israel,” MK Meir Porush, an MP for United Torah Judaism, said last week.
Another member of parliament from the same party, Moshe Gafni, focused his anger on Bennett, who, while expected to become the first Orthodox prime minister of Israel, was branded by Gaffney as a traitor focused on power.
Gaffney called Bennett an “evil” and urged him to remove the kippah’s hood, considered a sign of Jewish piety.
Gaffney claimed that “Israel has degenerated.” “We will shout to heaven and earth for the behavior of this man who is supposed to be a religious man but who has been looking for this all along.”
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