The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, gives the former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the mandate to form the new Government. /
From now on, the former prime minister has 28 days to assemble the new Executive
The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, delivered this Sunday to former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the mandate to form the new Government, once the consultation process was completed after the early legislative elections held on November 1. Herzog already announced before the start of the consultations that he hoped to deliver the mandate during the day on Sunday, with the Likud leader as the great favorite after his bloc won the majority of seats in the Knesset.
In this way, 64 parliamentarians have recommended ‘Bibi’ to the position of prime minister, while 28 have shown their support for the leader of Yesh Atid and current prime minister, Yair Lapid, according to the newspaper ‘The Jerusalem Post’. Thus, Netanyahu has received the support of Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudiy and Noam, which will allow him to form a coalition of right-wing, far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties. Lapid has only had the support of his party and the Labor Party, while the United National Party, Yisrael Beitenu, and the Arabs of Raam and Hadash-Taal have avoided recommending any of the parliamentarians who will integrate the next Knesset.
From now on, Netanyahu has 28 days to assemble the new Executive. If he doesn’t succeed, he could give him a fourteen-day extension, after which he would have to decide whether to leave the task in his hands, entrust it to someone else, or call new elections.
concerns
The consultation process has been marked by Herzog’s statements captured by an open microphone in which he stated that “everyone is anxious” about the possibility that the leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit, Itamar Ben Gvir, will acquire a portfolio in the Executive.
The Israeli president on Thursday conveyed these concerns to Ben Gvir himself, to whom he told him that he has “a certain image that worries in many places about the treatment of Arabs in the State and in the region.” “World leaders ask questions,” he stressed. “I am asked in the Muslim world about the Temple Mount. This matter is sensitive, “Herzog said, referring to the Esplanade of the Mosques by the name by which the Jews know the place, as reported by the newspaper ‘The Times of Israel’.
In response, Ben Gvir said that he “does not treat the Arabs as a monolith”, although he stressed that “there must be order”. “We are not saying that the Temple Mount is not sacred to others, but we have to remember that it is our heart and our history. We are against racism and you cannot tell a Jew that he cannot go because he is a Jew. I am for equal rights », he settled.