Netanyahu out as new Israeli government approved - BBC News

Reuters

Benjamin Netanyahu has lost his 12-year hold on power in Israel after its parliament voted in a new coalition government.

Right-wing nationalist Naftali Bennett has been sworn in as prime minister, leading a "government of change".

He will lead an unprecedented coalition of parties which was approved with a razor-thin majority of 60-59.

Mr Bennett will be prime minister until September 2023 as part of a power-sharing deal.

He will then hand power over to Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid, for a further two years.

Mr Netanyahu - Israel's longest-serving leader who has dominated its political landscape for years - will remain head of the right-wing Likud party and become leader of the opposition.

• Who is Naftali Bennett, Israel's likely next PM?
• Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu: Commando turned PM

During the debate in the Knesset (parliament), a defiant Mr Netanyahu promised: "We'll be back."

After the vote, Mr Netanyahu walked over to Mr Bennett and shook his hand.

US President Joe Biden has already sent his congratulations to Mr Bennett, saying he looks forward to working with him.

Why has this happened?

Mr Netanyahu has served a record-breaking five terms, first from 1996 to 1999, then continuously from 2009 to 2021.

He called an election in April 2019 but failed to win enough support to form a new coalition government. Two more elections followed, each of which ended inconclusively.

The third election resulted in a government of national unity where Mr Netanyahu agreed to share power with the then-opposition leader Benny Gantz. But the arrangement collapsed in December, triggering a fourth election.

Although Likud emerged as the largest party in the 120-seat Knesset, Mr Netanyahu was again unable to form a governing coalition and the task was handed to Mr Lapid, whose centrist Yesh Atid party had emerged as the second largest.

Reuters

Opposition to Mr Netanyahu staying in power had grown, not just among the left and centre but also among right-wing parties that are ordinarily ideologically aligned to Likud, including Yamina.

Although Yamina came joint fifth in the election with only seven seats, its support was critical if any potential coalition government was to have a majority in parliament. After weeks of negotiations, Mr Lapid brought Yamina on board as part of a constellation of parties whose only common goal was to remove Mr Netanyahu from office.

The agreement involving eight factions with the 61 seats required for a majority was signed on 2 June, just half an hour before a deadline was due to expire, effectively sealing Mr Netanyahu's fate.

What will the new government be like?

In appearance, Mr Bennett's government will be unlike any which has preceded it in Israel's 73-year history.

The alliance contains parties which have vast ideological differences, and perhaps most significantly includes the first independent Arab party to be part of a potential ruling coalition, Raam. It is also expected to have a record number of eight female ministers.

The inclusion of Raam and left-wing non-Arab Israeli parties means there could be friction on issues such as Israeli policies towards Palestinians - Yamina and another right-wing party, New Hope, are staunch supporters of Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, for instance.

There could also be difficulties over social policies - while some parties want to advance gay rights, such as recognising same sex marriages, Raam, an Islamist party, is against this.

In addition, some parties want to relax religious restrictions more extensively than Yamina - a national-religious party - will likely allow.

Mr Bennett has indicated his government would focus on areas where agreement was possible, like economic issues or the coronavirus pandemic, while avoiding more contentious matters.

"Nobody will have to give up their ideology," he recently said, "but all will have to postpone the realisation of some of their dreams... We'll focus on what can be achieved, rather than arguing about what cannot."

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2021-06-13 18:38:27Z
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Netanyahu out as new Israeli government approved - BBC News

Reuters

Benjamin Netanyahu has lost his 12-year hold on power in Israel after the country's parliament voted in a new coalition government.

A new "government of change" will be led by right-wing nationalist Naftali Bennett of the Yamina party.

He will lead an unprecedented coalition of parties which was approved with a razor-thin majority of 60-59.

Mr Bennett will be prime minister until September 2023 as part of a power-sharing deal.

He will then hand power over to Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid, for a further two years.

Mr Netanyahu - Israel's longest-serving leader who has dominated its political landscape for years - will remain head of the right-wing Likud party and become leader of the opposition.

• Who is Naftali Bennett, Israel's likely next PM?
• Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu: Commando turned PM

During the debate in the Knesset (parliament), a defiant Mr Netanyahu promised: "We'll be back."

US President Joe Biden has already sent his congratulations to Mr Bennett, saying he looks forward to working with him.

Why has this happened?

Mr Netanyahu has served a record-breaking five terms, first from 1996 to 1999, then continuously from 2009 to 2021.

He called an election in April 2019 but failed to win enough support to form a new coalition government. Two more elections followed, each of which ended inconclusively.

The third election resulted in a government of national unity where Mr Netanyahu agreed to share power with the then-opposition leader Benny Gantz. But the arrangement collapsed in December, triggering a fourth election.

Although Likud emerged as the largest party in the 120-seat Knesset, Mr Netanyahu was again unable to form a governing coalition and the task was handed to Mr Lapid, whose centrist Yesh Atid party had emerged as the second largest.

Opposition to Mr Netanyahu staying in power had grown, not just among the left and centre but also among right-wing parties that are ordinarily ideologically aligned to Likud, including Yamina.

Although Yamina came joint fifth in the election with only seven seats, its support was critical if any potential coalition government was to have a majority in parliament. After weeks of negotiations, Mr Lapid brought Yamina on board as part of a constellation of parties whose only common goal was to remove Mr Netanyahu from office.

The agreement involving eight factions with the 61 seats required for a majority was signed on 2 June, just half an hour before a deadline was due to expire, effectively sealing Mr Netanyahu's fate.

What will the new government be like?

In appearance, Mr Bennett's government will be unlike any which has preceded it in Israel's 73-year history.

The alliance contains parties which have vast ideological differences, and perhaps most significantly includes the first independent Arab party to be part of a potential ruling coalition, Raam. It is also expected to have a record number of eight female ministers.

The inclusion of Raam and left-wing non-Arab Israeli parties means there could be friction on issues such as Israeli policies towards Palestinians - Yamina and another right-wing party, New Hope, are staunch supporters of Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, for instance.

There could also be difficulties over social policies - while some parties want to advance gay rights, such as recognising same sex marriages, Raam, an Islamist party, is against this.

In addition, some parties want to relax religious restrictions more extensively than Yamina - a national-religious party - will likely allow.

Mr Bennett has indicated his government would focus on areas where agreement was possible, like economic issues or the coronavirus pandemic, while avoiding more contentious matters.

"Nobody will have to give up their ideology," he recently said, "but all will have to postpone the realisation of some of their dreams... We'll focus on what can be achieved, rather than arguing about what cannot."

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2021-06-13 18:14:10Z
52781662829856

End of era in Israel as Netanyahu is ousted - Financial Times

Israel’s parliament is poised to vote in a new government later on Sunday, ending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year grip on power after four elections and two years of political paralysis.

The vote will mark a historic change in the Jewish state’s leadership, replacing its longest-serving premier with Naftali Bennett, an ultranationalist whose Yamina party controls just six seats in the 120-member Knesset.

Bennett, a 49-year-old tech millionaire who bills himself as more rightwing than Netanyahu, will be premier for two years and is then expected to step down, and make way for Yair Lapid, a former TV anchor who runs the centrist Yesh Atid.

Lapid, 57, cobbled together an eight-party coalition that united the fringe-left and the hard-right with an Islamist party to oust Netanyahu. It is the first time in Israeli history that an Arab party will share power with a Zionist government.

Netanyahu, the 71-year-old standard bearer of the rightwing, has run Israel for 15 of the past 25 years. He has spent the last two weeks trying to pry apart the coalition, which will have a one-seat majority. He lambasted Bennett for joining forces with the centre and the left, describing it repeatedly as the “fraud of the century”.

He is set to enter opposition as a criminal defendant amid an ongoing trial on three charges of corruption. He has pled not guilty to all charges and has rejected the trial as a politically motivated witch hunt designed to end his premiership.

For Israelis, who have gone through four elections since April 2019 — three ended in a stalemate, while one yielded a shortlived unity government — the vote will signal at least a short intermission to political gridlock. The coalition is weak, and political analysts are already predicting its demise over a wide variety of disagreements — gay rights, the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel and even the rights of non-Orthodox Jews to marry freely.

Netanyahu served as acting prime minister for much of the coronavirus pandemic, eventually sourcing enough vaccines to oversee one of the world’s fastest vaccination drives. But Israelis failed to reward that achievement with a clear victory for the rightwing bloc of parties in March elections.

Coalition-building among his rivals was interrupted by a fortnight of communal strife within Israel, accompanied by an 11-day aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip to contain the Palestinian militant group Hamas and widespread revolts in the occupied West Bank.

More than 250 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces, and about a dozen were killed in Israel in the worst violence since the 2014 war with Hamas.

But opposition leaders — four of the parties are run by people Netanyahu personally groomed, then betrayed in one way or another — pulled together a coalition with little more than half an hour to spare before a deadline that would have triggered fresh elections.

It includes the Ra’am Islamist party, which represents the traditional Muslim vote among the 2m Palestinian citizens of Israel. It is joining the government in exchange for billions of dollars of investment for one of the most impoverished sections of Israeli society.

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2021-06-13 17:55:52Z
52781662829856

G7: World leaders promise one billion Covid vaccine doses for poorer nations - BBC News

Leaders of the major industrial nations have pledged one billion Covid vaccine doses to poor countries as a "big step towards vaccinating the world", Boris Johnson has said.

At the end of the G7 summit in Cornwall, the PM said countries were rejecting "nationalistic approaches".

He said vaccinating the world would show the benefits of the G7's democratic values.

There was also a pledge to wipe out their contribution to climate change.

After the first meeting of world leaders in two years, Mr Johnson said "the world was looking to us to reject some of the selfish, nationalistic approaches that marred the initial global response to the pandemic and to channel all our diplomatic, economic and scientific might to defeating Covid for good".

He said the G7 leaders had pledged to supply the vaccines to poor countries either directly or through the World Health Organization's Covax scheme - including 100 million from the UK.

The communique issued by the summit pledges to "end the pandemic and prepare for the future by driving an intensified international effort, starting immediately, to vaccinate the world by getting as many safe vaccines to as many people as possible as fast as possible".

• G7 to agree tough measures on burning coal
• In Pictures: World leaders bask in Cornwall sun at G7 summit
• How significant are G7's climate pledges?

Mr Johnson rejected suggestions the donation was a moral failure by the G7 as it was not enough to cover the needs of poorer countries.

He referred to the the UK's involvement in the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

"Already of the 1.5 billion vaccines that have been distributed around the world, I think that people in this country should be very proud that half a billion of them are as a result of the actions taken by the UK government in doing that deal with the Oxford scientists and AstraZeneca to distribute it at cost," he said.

He added that "we are going flat out and we are producing vaccines as fast as we can, and distributing them as fast as we can".

The target to vaccinate the world by the end of next year would be met "very largely thanks to the efforts of the countries who have come here today", Mr Johnson said.

Vaccines provide a route out the pandemic, but only if they are distributed equitably around the globe based on need.

Currently, many richer nations have good access to doses for mass immunisation of their citizens, while some developing countries are yet to receive any.

The UK has bought enough vaccine to immunise its entire population several times over.

G7 nations, including the UK, have agreed to step up production and donate a billion doses, but that will take time.

The ambition is to vaccinate "the world" by the end of 2022.

The World Health Organization estimates at least 11 billion doses are needed to stand a chance of beating the virus, which is why critics say the G7 summit will go down as an unforgivable moral failure.

Mr Johnson also dismissed the suggestion that patents for vaccines should be waived in order to boost global supply, something which the US backed last month.

He said he wanted to protect "incentives for innovation" while building up manufacturing capacity, especially in Africa.

The communique calls for a "timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based WHO-convened" investigation into the origins of Covid-19.

US President Joe Biden has previously said the US intelligence community is split on whether coronavirus came from human contact with an infected animal or from a lab accident - a theory rejected by China.

Mr Johnson said "the advice that we've had is it doesn't look as though this particular disease of zoonotic origin came from a lab", but he added: "Clearly anybody sensible would want to keep an open mind about that".

French President Emmanuel Macron said the international community needed clarity about the origins of the virus but said it was up to the WHO to investigate.

'Missed opportunity'

With G7 countries accounting for 20% of carbon emissions, Mr Johnson said: "We were clear this weekend that action needs to start with us."

He said as well as pledging to eliminate their own contributions to climate change, the G7 would phase out coal-fired power stations without carbon capture technology and raise $100bn (£70bn) to help poorer countries cut emissions.

But pressed on the lack of binding agreements and timetables, the prime minister says he will not "pretend our work is done" and he will be "on everybody's case" to make further progress ahead of the COP26 summit in Scotland later this year.

Getty Images

Kirsty McNeill from Crack the Crises, a coalition of charities and NGOs including Save the Children and Oxfam, said the G7 summit was a "historic missed opportunity" on Covid-19 and climate change.

Leaders arrived "with good intentions but without their cheque books", she said.

Joanna Rea, from Unicef UK, said the G7 pledge on vaccines was "the beginning of the action required to end this pandemic" but called for a "rapid acceleration of dose sharing in the next three months to ensure millions of vaccines get to the people in countries who need them the most".

In their communique, G7 leaders also pledged to:

• reinvigorate their economies "with plans that create jobs, invest in infrastructure, drive innovation, support people, and level up so that no place or person, irrespective of age, ethnicity or gender is left behind"
• "build back better" by establishing a clean, green growth fund for infrastructure developments in developing countries
• support a green revolution that creates jobs, cuts emissions and seeks to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees. They also committed to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by no later than 2050
• get 40 million more girls into education by 2026

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2021-06-13 15:28:34Z
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Israel's Netanyahu poised to lose power to new government - BBC News

GIL COHEN-MAGEN/Getty Images

Israel's parliament has begun debating the formation of a new government that would end 12 years of rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The prospective government - an unprecedented coalition of parties - has a razor-thin majority of one seat.

If it is approved in a vote on Sunday, it would bring to an end years of political paralysis in which three elections resulted in stalemate.

Right-wing nationalist Naftali Bennett is poised to become PM.

In a power-sharing deal, Mr Bennett, who heads the Yamina party, will hold office until September 2023, when he will hand over to Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid, for a further two years.

Mr Netanyahu - Israel's longest-serving leader, who has dominated its political landscape for years - would remain head of the right-wing Likud party and become leader of the opposition.

He has railed against the likely new government, calling it a "dangerous coalition of fraud and surrender" and has vowed to "overthrow it very quickly".

• Who is Naftali Bennett, Israel's likely next PM?
• Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu: Commando turned PM

Meanwhile, his trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust - allegations he denies - continues.

What have the main parties said?

Speaking in the first minutes of the debate, Mr Bennett thanked Mr Netanyahu for his years of service to Israel.

And he said the new coalition would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

For his part, Mr Netanyahu promised the opposition would have a "strong and clear voice" if he was ousted as PM.

"If it's our destiny to be in the opposition, we'll do so with our heads high until we take down this bad government, and return to lead the country our way," he said.

Coalition seeks to maintain calm

The new coalition is doing everything to avoid last-minute surprises here in the corridors of the Knesset. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid are trying to keep the tone calm, despite the political convulsions their pact has unleashed.

On Saturday night, the prime minister-designate urged protesters who had gathered outside Mr Netanyahu's home to avoid "provocations".

And he's continuously held fire despite the flak from Mr Netanyahu, who accuses him of fraud and creating a government of surrender.

In return, as he prepares for the vote to finally push his old boss from power, Mr Bennett will reportedly thank Mr Netanyahu for his service. He has already done the deed, so now the words are less important.

Why has this happened?

Mr Netanyahu has served a record-breaking five terms, first from 1996 to 1999, then continuously from 2009 to 2021.

He called an election in April 2019 but failed to win enough support to form a new coalition government. Two more elections followed, each of which ended inconclusively.

The third election resulted in a government of national unity where Mr Netanyahu agreed to share power with the then-opposition leader Benny Gantz. But the arrangement collapsed in December, triggering a fourth election.

Getty Images

Although Likud emerged as the largest party in the 120-seat parliament, Mr Netanyahu was again unable to form a governing coalition and the task was handed to Mr Lapid, whose party had emerged as the second largest.

Opposition to Mr Netanyahu staying in power had grown, not just among the left and centre but also among right-wing parties that are ordinarily ideologically aligned to Likud, including Yamina.

Although Yamina came joint fifth in the election with only seven seats, its support was critical if any potential coalition government was to have a majority in parliament. After weeks of negotiations, Mr Lapid brought Yamina on board as part of a constellation of parties whose only common goal was to remove Mr Netanyahu from office.

The agreement involving eight factions with the 61 seats required for a majority was signed on 2 June, just half an hour before a deadline was due to expire, effectively sealing Mr Netanyahu's fate.

What would the new government be like?

In appearance, Mr Bennett's government would be unlike any which has preceded it in Israel's 73-year history. The alliance contains parties which have vast ideological differences, and perhaps most significantly includes the first independent Arab party to be part of a potential ruling coalition, Raam. It is also expected to have a record number of eight female ministers.

The inclusion of Raam and left-wing non-Arab Israeli parties means there could be friction on issues such as Israeli policies towards Palestinians - Yamina and another right-wing party, New Hope, are staunch supporters of Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, for instance.

There could also be difficulties over social policies - while some parties want to advance gay rights, such as recognising same sex marriages, Raam, an Islamist party, is against this.

In addition, some parties want to relax religious restrictions more extensively than Yamina - a national-religious party - will likely allow.

Mr Bennett has indicated his government would focus on areas where agreement was possible, like economic issues or the coronavirus pandemic, while avoiding more contentious matters.

"Nobody will have to give up their ideology," he recently said, "but all will have to postpone the realisation of some of their dreams... We'll focus on what can be achieved, rather than arguing about what cannot."

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2021-06-13 14:33:03Z
52781662829856

G7 summit: Boris Johnson rejects claims of 'moral failure' on vaccines - and says Brexit row didn't leave 'sour taste' in Cornwall - Sky News

Boris Johnson has rejected claims of "moral failure" by the G7 over providing more COVID vaccines for poorer nations - as he dismissed suggestions a Brexit row had overshadowed the world leaders' Cornwall summit.

At the end of three days of talks at the seaside resort of Carbis Bay, the heads of the world's leading democracies committed to providing one billion doses of coronavirus jabs over the next year.

The prime minister described the pledge as one of the "triumphs" of the G7 summit.

However, charities claimed the G7 had chosen to "cook the books" on their vaccine pledge.

Image: Charities accused world leaders of choosing to 'cook the books' on vaccine pledges

The summit's final communique gave a commitment to sharing only 870 million doses directly, with the rest of the one billion pledge made up through funding to an international vaccine-sharing scheme.

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has challenged G7 leaders to help vaccinate at least 70% of the world's population by the time they meet again next year - a target the WHO has said will need 11 billion doses.

Former prime minister Gordon Brown told Sky News the G7 summit will go down as a "missed opportunity" as he accused leaders of "unforgivable moral failure" over providing vaccines to the rest of the world.

More on Boris Johnson

But, speaking at a news conference on Sunday at the end of the Cornwall summit, Mr Johnson pushed back against Mr Brown's assessment.

"I really must reject that," he said. "This is another billion (doses) made up of a massive contribution by the United States, other friends - the UK putting in another 100 million.

"This is June to June - now until next June - and don't forget this vaccine has literally only been invented very recently, these vaccines have only come onstream very recently."

He added the G7 were "going flat out and we are producing vaccines as fast as we can, and distributing them as fast as we can".

And the prime minister said a target to vaccinate the world by the end of 2022 will be done "very largely thanks to the efforts of the countries who have come here today".

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Brown: Why the UK should donate more vaccines

In his own end-of-summit news conference, US President Joe Biden said helping the rest of the world battle the COVID pandemic would be a "constant project for a long time".

And he added there was a "clear consensus" among other G7 leaders that the vaccine donation pledges wouldn't be the end.

The WHO have also said the waiving of intellectual property rights on COVID vaccines is "essential" to inoculating the world.

But G7 countries are split between those in favour of waiving vaccine patents - such as the US and France - and those opposed, including the UK and Germany.

Asked why he did not support waiving intellectual property rights on vaccines, Mr Johnson said: "The crucial thing is to make sure we build up capacity, build up manufacturing capacity - fill and finish and manufacturing - around the world, particularly in Africa.

"I think we should be sharing knowledge as much as we can, whilst obviously protecting the... incentives for innovation.

"You've got to accomplish both things at once."

Image: Tensions between the UK and EU leaders - such as Emmanuel Macron - were a feature of the G7 summit

The prime minister highlighted the Oxford-AstraZenca model of providing vaccines "at cost" as "highly effective".

As well as the G7 leaders' discussions on COVID recovery, future pandemic preparedness and climate change at the summit, lingering Brexit tensions have also been on display in Cornwall between the UK and EU leaders.

But Mr Johnson denied that a continuing UK-EU row over post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland had left a "sour taste" at the Cornwall gathering.

"I can tell you that the vast, vast majority of the conversations that we have had over the last three or four days have been about other subjects and there has been a fantastic degree of harmony between the leaders of our countries," he said.

He added the subject of the Brexit row had "occupied a vestigial, vanishingly small propotion of our deliberations".

In bilateral talks on the sidelines of G7 summit, French President Emmanuel Macron was reported to have suggested Northern Ireland was a different country to the UK.

Asked if he had found a chance to correct Mr Macron during the summit, Mr Johnson said: "Of course we make the point continuously we are part of one great, indivisible United Kingdom."

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What is the G7?

Following the conclusion of the G7 summit, a group of leading charities accused world leaders of having "fallen disappointingly short".

Organisations including UNICEF UK, Crisis Action, and Action for Global Health said in a joint statement: "The success of this year's G7 summit should be judged by whether leaders have put their money and resources where their mouths are.

"Without 10 billion vaccines, the removal of patents and investment in healthcare systems pledges to inoculate the world by the end of next year ring hollow."

Max Lawson, head of inequality policy at Oxfam, said: "This G7 summit will live on in infamy.

"Faced with the biggest health emergency in a century and a climate catastrophe that is destroying our planet, they have completely failed to meet the challenges of our times.

"Never in the history of the G7 has there been a bigger gap between their actions and the needs of the world.

"In the face of these challenges the G7 have chosen to cook the books on vaccines and continue to cook the planet."

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2021-06-13 15:00:00Z
52781664666791

Israel's Netanyahu poised to lose power to new government - BBC News

GIL COHEN-MAGEN/Getty Images

Israel's parliament has begun debating the formation of a new government that would end 12 years of rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The prospective government - an unprecedented coalition of parties - has a razor-thin majority of one seat.

If it is approved in a vote on Sunday, it would bring to an end years of political paralysis in which three elections resulted in stalemate.

Right-wing nationalist Naftali Bennett is poised to become PM.

In a power-sharing deal, Mr Bennett, who heads the Yamina party, will hold office until September 2023, when he will hand over to Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid, for a further two years.

Mr Netanyahu - Israel's longest-serving leader, who has dominated its political landscape for years - would remain head of the right-wing Likud party and become leader of the opposition.

He has railed against the likely new government, calling it a "dangerous coalition of fraud and surrender" and has vowed to "overthrow it very quickly".

• Who is Naftali Bennett, Israel's likely next PM?
• Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu: Commando turned PM

Meanwhile, his trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust - allegations he denies - continues.

What have the main parties said?

Speaking in the first minutes of the debate, Mr Bennett thanked Mr Netanyahu for his years of service to Israel.

And he said the new coalition would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

For his part, Mr Netanyahu promised the opposition would have a "strong and clear voice" if he was ousted as PM.

"If it's our destiny to be in the opposition, we'll do so with our heads high until we take down this bad government, and return to lead the country our way," he said.

Coalition seeks to maintain calm

The new coalition is doing everything to avoid last-minute surprises here in the corridors of the Knesset. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid are trying to keep the tone calm, despite the political convulsions their pact has unleashed.

On Saturday night, the prime minister-designate urged protesters who had gathered outside Mr Netanyahu's home to avoid "provocations".

And he's continuously held fire despite the flak from Mr Netanyahu, who accuses him of fraud and creating a government of surrender.

In return, as he prepares for the vote to finally push his old boss from power, Mr Bennett will reportedly thank Mr Netanyahu for his service. He has already done the deed, so now the words are less important.

Why has this happened?

Mr Netanyahu has served a record-breaking five terms, first from 1996 to 1999, then continuously from 2009 to 2021.

He called an election in April 2019 but failed to win enough support to form a new coalition government. Two more elections followed, each of which ended inconclusively.

The third election resulted in a government of national unity where Mr Netanyahu agreed to share power with the then-opposition leader Benny Gantz. But the arrangement collapsed in December, triggering a fourth election.

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Although Likud emerged as the largest party in the 120-seat parliament, Mr Netanyahu was again unable to form a governing coalition and the task was handed to Mr Lapid, whose party had emerged as the second largest.

Opposition to Mr Netanyahu staying in power had grown, not just among the left and centre but also among right-wing parties that are ordinarily ideologically aligned to Likud, including Yamina.

Although Yamina came joint fifth in the election with only seven seats, its support was critical if any potential coalition government was to have a majority in parliament. After weeks of negotiations, Mr Lapid brought Yamina on board as part of a constellation of parties whose only common goal was to remove Mr Netanyahu from office.

The agreement involving eight factions with the 61 seats required for a majority was signed on 2 June, just half an hour before a deadline was due to expire, effectively sealing Mr Netanyahu's fate.

What would the new government be like?

In appearance, Mr Bennett's government would be unlike any which has preceded it in Israel's 73-year history. The alliance contains parties which have vast ideological differences, and perhaps most significantly includes the first independent Arab party to be part of a potential ruling coalition, Raam. It is also expected to have a record number of eight female ministers.

The inclusion of Raam and left-wing non-Arab Israeli parties means there could be friction on issues such as Israeli policies towards Palestinians - Yamina and another right-wing party, New Hope, are staunch supporters of Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, for instance.

There could also be difficulties over social policies - while some parties want to advance gay rights, such as recognising same sex marriages, Raam, an Islamist party, is against this.

In addition, some parties want to relax religious restrictions more extensively than Yamina - a national-religious party - will likely allow.

Mr Bennett has indicated his government would focus on areas where agreement was possible, like economic issues or the coronavirus pandemic, while avoiding more contentious matters.

"Nobody will have to give up their ideology," he recently said, "but all will have to postpone the realisation of some of their dreams... We'll focus on what can be achieved, rather than arguing about what cannot."

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https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiNWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJiYy5jby51ay9uZXdzL3dvcmxkLW1pZGRsZS1lYXN0LTU3Mzk2OTkw0gE5aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmJjLmNvLnVrL25ld3Mvd29ybGQtbWlkZGxlLWVhc3QtNTczOTY5OTAuYW1w?oc=5

2021-06-13 14:09:55Z
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