Benjamin Netanyahu’s time may be up as Israeli parties meet for coalition talks after deadlocked election
- The end of the Netanyahu era would be an extraordinary moment in Israeli politics
- He is the country’s longest-serving prime minister, having held the post for a total of more than 13 years
President Reuven Rivlin was to hold separate meetings with all the political parties voted into the latest parliament, to hear their recommendations on who should be the premier. It was far from certain that whoever gets the task will succeed in cobbling together a coalition, and there have been repeated calls for a unity government to overcome the impasse.
The consultations beginning at 5pm local time – and scheduled to continue on Monday – will be streamed live by Rivlin’s office.
The political parties will arrive in order of the number of votes received. That means former military chief Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White alliance will arrive first, since it won 33 seats out of parliament’s 120, two more than Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party.
Later in the evening, Rivlin will hear the recommendations of two key parties: the mainly Arab Joint List alliance, which won the third-most seats with 13, and ex-defence minister Avigdor Lieberman’s nationalist Yisrael Beitenu, which won eight.
Israel’s Arab parties have traditionally refrained from endorsing anyone as prime minister, but they have not ruled out backing Gantz this time as part of efforts to oust Netanyahu.
