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Thursday, 06 May 2021_Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has tasked opposition leader Yair Lapid with forming a coalition cabinet, dumping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who passed a deadline to secure enough allies to form his own cabinet.
In March, embattled Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party won the most seats in parliamentary elections, a mere 30, not enough to form a cabinet outright, and Netanyahu was tasked by Rivlin with forming a coalition cabinet within 28 days.
He missed that deadline on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Rivlin tapped Lapid, a former television host and finance minister whose centrist Yesh Atid party came in second in the March vote by securing 17 seats at the 120-member Israeli parliament.
Like Netanyahu, Lapid now has a 28-day deadline to form a coalition cabinet.
The Israeli regime has held four parliamentary elections just in the past two years, all of them inconclusive. If Lapid also fails to form a coalition cabinet in time, an unprecedented fifth election would seem inevitable.
He will face tough negotiations as Netanyahu, the longest-serving Israeli premier, who has been in power consecutively since 2009, would seek to block his path to the high office, as he successfully did with Lapid’s predecessor, Benny Gantz.
In acknowledgement of those troubles, Rivlin said in a statement that the regime had “been caught in a maze — if not a political crisis — for some time now.”
Lapid, meanwhile, welcomed the decision.
Although he claims to support negotiations with the Palestinians, Lapid describes himself as a “security hawk.”
One potential figure who can help Lapid reach a 61-seat majority, although with seven seats of his own only, is Naftali Bennett, the leader of the hawkish Yamina party, the far-right former settler leader and minister of military affairs.
Netanyahu had said he suggested a deal in which Bennett would become prime minister for a year and then hand power back. But the suggestion was swiftly rejected. A similar “rotation” deal between Bennett and Lapid is a possibility.
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