With a Wednesday midnight deadline, the coalition to replace Netanyahu was stuck at 58 Knesset seats, short of the 61 needed to hold a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. They turned to Mansour Abbas’s United Arab List (Ra’am) for their 4 votes, and now the eight-member coalition holds 62 votes. Yairi Lapid, whose Yesh Atid party holds 17 seats, then told President Reuven Rivlin late Wednesday night that he has “succeeded in forming a government” with Naftali Bennett of Yamina, holding 8 seats. The deal allows Bennett to be the prime minister for the first two years, with Lapid to replace him at that point.
Bennett was Defense Minister before Benny Gantz replaced him in 2020. There is not a lot pretty here, on the surface. He and his Yamina party have been very harsh on the Palestinians — in particular his #2, Ayelet Shaked. She had posted on Facebook saying that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and justifies its destruction, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.” Much remains to be seen as to how much an “I have to get rid of Bibi” movement can extend into something positive.
