Opposition reached agreement and announced formation of new government in Israel

Israeli opposition parties reach agreement to form a “change” coalition which will allow them to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from his post, and turn the page on more than two years of political crisis, reported the opposition leader Yair Lapid to the president Reuven rivlin and the Speaker of the Knesset, Yariv Levin, Wednesday evening.

Now it’s up to Levin to decide when to hold the confidence vote in the Knesset and the swearing-in of the new government. You are expected to insist on waiting seven days full until next Wednesday, or even try to extend it to 12 days, according to Israeli media. Each day is considered critical because Yamina’s deputies are under intense pressure from the right to oppose the coalition.

If the vote of confidence is obtained, the Executive would consist of a strange mix of parties, including far right and left, religious and secular, and even an Islamist party, something unheard of in the country’s history.

Another of its peculiarities would be to have two prime ministers: the ultra-nationalist Naftali Bennett, the leader of Yamina, will hold the post for two years before transferring it to the centrist Yair Lapid, which leads to the formation Yesh Atid and whose mandate to form a government expired this midnight.

The Arab Party The window, led by Islamists Mansur Abas, overnight formalized its support for the coalition project and He thus removed one of the last obstacles to the formation of a new government. The decision was ratified after signing clean Bennet -that after having flirted with Netanyahu for months announced his support for Lapid on Sunday-, and the secular right Guideon Sarre, leader of Nueva Esperanza. The other members of the coalition will be the far right Israel Our home, the center-right Blue and white, the center-left Labour Party and the leftist Meretz.

One of the main disputes concerned the appointment of members of the Judicial Appointments Commission, in which Ayelet shaken, Yamina’s number two, intends to take the place attributed to the Labor leader, Merav Michaeli.

Shaken, former Minister of Justice (2015-2019), was one of the strongest voices in the campaign of right-wing parties for limit the powers of the Supreme Court and reform the judicial system as a whole. Specifically, their presence on this committee, which designates, among other things, the judges of the Supreme Court, would give a majority to the right wing of the new executive.

These The differences have highlighted the limits of an alliance based solely on the will to overthrow Netanyahu, who occupies the post of first minister for 12 years and that after being the first to receive the mandate to form an Executive, he failed to establish the right-wing coalition he intended.

On the other hand, parties that are not part of the Executive, including the Likud of Netanyahu, they would have the possibility to challenge the legality of the agreements concluded, with the aim of hampering their training.

(With information from EFE and AFP)

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