President Réouven Rivlin is going to ask the leader of the centrist party Bleu-Blanc, Benny Gantz, to compose an executive.
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu gives up. He announced Monday, October 21 in the evening on his Facebook account he gave up forming a government after the legislative September 17, the results were very tight.
"Not long ago I announced to the Head of State (Réouven Rivlin) that I gave up forming a government "said Netanyahu in a video directed at "Israeli citizens". He accused Benny Gantz of having failed all attempts to form a national unity government.
All Knesset groups, the Israeli Parliament, will be informed that "The president intends to transfer the mandate to form the government, as soon as possible, to the president of Bleu Blanc, MP Benny Gantz", according to a press release from Mr. Rivlin, which states that this transfer must take place Thursday.
Twenty-eight days to form a government
Mr. Gantz, a former chief of the army, will, like his predecessor, have twenty-eight days to complete this task, which is already difficult. Because at the end of the elections, MM. Netanyahu and Gantz respectively won the support of 55 and 54 elected to lead the next government, but without reaching the threshold of 61 deputies allowing them to form a majority union.
"The time has come to act", said in a statement the party Bleu Blanc, Monday evening. He affirmed his determination to form a Liberal Union Government " which means it will seek to limit the influence of religious parties in forming a coalition government.
According to analysts, former army chief Benny Gantz is also likely to fail to form a unity government. In this case, President Rivlin could ask a majority of MPs to nominate a candidate. He has said repeatedly that he will do everything possible to avoid further elections – which would be the third since April – but the continuation of the political stalemate could make them inevitable.
Blocked negotiations
President Rivlin had mandated Netanyahu, who is seeking to extend his long-running reign in Israel's history, in an attempt to rally Gantz into a unity government, but the talks failed.
During negotiations in recent weeks, Likud (party of Benyamin Netanyahu) tried to get the blue-centrist centrists to accept a compromise, drafted by President Rivlin, according to which MM. Netanyahu and Gantz would take the position of head of government in turn. This proposal provided that Benjamin Netanyahu was the first to serve as Prime Minister, but was replaced, as soon as he was likely to be charged with corruption by the end of the year, by Mr. Gantz. But the latter estimated that having obtained the largest number of seats on September 17 – 33 in Bleu-Blanc against 32 in Likud – he was to be the first to hold the position of head of government.
He has also repeatedly stated that his party would not sit in a prime minister's government on a corruption charge.
Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, also complicated the discussions by promising that he would not abandon the small right-wing religious parties that had supported him in Parliament, claiming he represented the entire right-wing bloc, strong of 55 deputies, in the negotiations. Mr. Gantz considered this condition unacceptable, as it would relegate him to the role of a secondary partner of a Netanyahu government.
