Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz have signed a deal to form a unity government in which they would share the premiership under a rotation agreement. This news comes after three elections and 17 months of election campaigns and coalition negotiations.
The deal between Netanyahu’s Likud Party and former military chief Benny Gantz’s Blue and White ends months of political paralysis and averts what would have been a fourth consecutive election in just over a year.
After March 2 elections ended in a stalemate, the two leaders agreed late last month to try to form an “emergency” unity Cabinet to cope with the burgeoning coronavirus crisis.
Ending weeks of negotiations, the sides announced a deal on Monday. Had they failed, the country likely would have been forced into another election.
Terms of the agreement weren’t immediately announced. But Israeli media said it called for a three-year period — with Netanyahu serving as prime minister for the first half and Gantz taking the job for the second half.
(AP / YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
it wont last for too long
Why not?
Why not? For one thing, there’s the strong risk that the moment the new government is sworn in the High Court will invent out of whole cloth a law that a person facing criminal charges can’t be prime minister.
It has already hinted that it is champing at the bit waiting for the opportunity to do so, and the only reason it hasn’t done so already is because there has been no case yet for it to hear. Once he is prime minister in a new government there will be a case for the court to hear, and it will be able to hand down the decision it wants so badly to, and then he will be out and Gantz will be PM.
That’s why Netanyahu tried to insist that there was no point in making an agreement unless Gantz agreed to pass legislation explicitly negating that proposition. Gantz refused, and now it seems Netanyahu caved in. So he may be gone within weeks.
Then, once the Wuhan Disease crisis is over, how long are right-wing MKs likely to put up with such a grossly unfair deal, that deprives them of almost everything they went into politics for? And Gantz would constantly have to worry that when the time comes to rotate Netanyahu will come up with a majority to cancel the deal, just as Peres almost did in the “Stinking Maneuver”.