Dec. 22 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The prime minister-designate, Benjamin Netanyahu, has informed the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, that he has managed to obtain support to form a government, a few minutes after the end of midnight tonight, the extension granted by the Presidency to form the Executive.
“Dear President, thanks to the enormous public support we received in the last elections, I inform you that I have been able to establish a government that will act in the interest of all the citizens of Israel,” the political leader told Herzog, just 18 minutes before expiration of the period granted and seven weeks after the elections.
Netanyahu has also shared a message on Twitter announcing the new government: “Thanks to the enormous public support we won in the last elections, I was able to establish a government that will act in the interest of all the citizens of Israel.”
Herzog, for his part, has responded by thanking the prime minister and wishing him luck. “The obligation is to work for the entire Israeli people and public, and I hope that everyone joins this mission at this time,” he said.
The first party to reach a final agreement with Likud, Netanyahu’s right-wing party, has been the Religious Zionist Party. The leader of the far-right group, Bezalel Smotrich, shared it minutes before the call in a brief message on Twitter: “Good afternoon, we have it,” he has published.
The Likud leader is scheduled to be sworn in to the future coalition government, which also includes the far-right Otzma Yehudi and the ultra-Orthodox Shas, on January 2. Netanyahu has to officially present the agreement to the Israeli Parliament 24 hours before being sworn in, as reported by the newspaper ‘The Times of Israel’.
The Likud-led bloc, which has the support of several ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties, has 64 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, so Netanyahu has a clear path to return to office less than two years after his electoral defeat in 2021.
According to ‘Israel National News’, among the clauses negotiated to reach the agreement with the Religious Zionist Party are the promotion of a reform of the judicial system; the appointment of a national Chief Rabbi; amendments to the law of return, known as the “grandson clause,” and a new kashrut law.
Netanyahu had asked for more time to form a new government and thus avoid early elections after the deadlock in talks with his partners. On January 22, the Likud won by a narrow margin in the parliamentary elections.
Thus, the Likud-Israel Beitenu alliance – formed by the Israeli right and the far-right party of former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman – headed by Netanyahu obtained 23.2 percent (31 seats out of 120 in the Knesset) last January.
