Member of Knesset (MK) Yair Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid faction, informed President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday night that he has been able to form a government.
After having obtained the signatures of all the faction leaders in the forming coalition, he conveyed the message at 23:22, by telephone and e-mail, minutes before his mandate to form a government ended.
Lapid spoke to Rivlin and informed him that the government will comprise of Yesh Atid and Kachol Lavan from the center-left, Yamina from the right, Labor from the left, Yisrael Beiteinu, New Hope from the right, the extreme left-wing Meretz and the Islamist Ra’am party.
Yamina’s leader Naftali Bennett will serve as prime minister for the first two years and Lapid will serve as alternate prime minister, and they will trade off after two years.
Rivlin thanked Lapid and congratulated him on forming a government.
“We expect the Knesset will convene as soon as possible to ratify the government, as required,” he said.
The government is expected to be sworn in 12 days on Monday.
Lapid’s announcement is not the end of this sprawling political saga, due to the expected opposition of MK Nir Orbach, together with the opposition of Amichai Chikli of the Yamina party, which means that the Bennett-Lapid government does not currently have the required majority of 61 votes.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing and religious parties are expected to work in the coming days to unravel the pending coalition.
Bennett, head of the Yamina (to the Right) party, will head a government comprised of several small left-wing parties and will thus oust Netanyahu and end his 12-year reign.
Bennett, who heads a party of only six MKs, will have to rely on the votes of Arab MKs, some of them from the anti-Zionist Islamist party.
After some 20 years in the political desert, Bennett, a right-winger, will be responsible for bringing the extreme left back to power and allowing an Islamist party to participate in the shaping of Israel’s future.
Bennett claimed that the government he heads will focus only on crucial issues and will refrain from addressing ideological contentious issues which are in dispute among his coalition members.
Ultimately, the eclectic government is expected to face many challenges as almost all issues are in contention among its members.
