This time, Benyamin Netanyahu was defeated by the right. The old partners he disappointed did not return, and some of his allies refused to make the necessary concessions. After twenty-eight days of negotiations, Tuesday May 4 at midnight, the most durable of Israeli prime ministers therefore had to hand over his mandate to form a government to the Israeli president. He had, however, spared no effort, promising positions here, committee seats there. To his ex-defense minister, the far-right leader Naftali Bennett, who has seven Knesset deputies, Mr. Netanyahu even offered to immediately take the head of a right-wing government, for a year, in the part of a rotation. In vain. “I did not ask for the post of Prime Minister, but a government – which unfortunately still does not have”, the leader of the Yamina party, who no longer trusted his former mentor, replied curtly.
The unstoppable tactician today appears to be largely weakened. After four elections in less than two years, Israel still does not manage to endow itself with a stable government. However, Benyamin Netanyahu needs to stay in power to limit the effects of his trial for corruption, fraud and breach of trust which opened in 2020. Since 2009, he has relied on a solid right-wing bloc, centered around his party, the Likud, around which gravitated his religious and far-right allies. But since the departure, with a crash, of the ultranationalist leader Avigdor Lieberman of the coalition in November 2018 – who inaugurated this sequence of elections from which the country no longer seems to be able to get out – the Prime Minister has lost his support. Many of its former allies, weary of broken promises and political games, now consider that “His continued power is damaging the State of Israel. They take the example of the crisis due to the coronavirus that the country had to manage without a budget because Benjamin Netanyahu manipulated the system to serve his own interests rather than those of Israel “, observes Gayil Talshir, professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“Support for terrorism”
The last legislative elections, on March 23, have once again reinforced this paradox, the same for two years: despite a strong right-wing majority, Mr. Netanyahu is unable to form a coalition. This time, a former Likud, Gideon Saar, stood in the way. It is him that Benyamin Netanyahu hoped to rally by offering the post of prime minister alternately to Naftali Bennett – a waste of time. The head of government therefore thought for a time of building his coalition with the external support of the Islamist deputies of the RAAM party, unexpected allies for the prime minister who has not ceased in recent years to attack Israeli Arabs, descendants of Palestinians who have remained behind. lands at the creation of Israel. But the supporters of Mr. Netanyahu of the ultra-right, the Jewish supremacists of the religious Zionism list, preferred to see him fall rather than join the Arabs. “We will not take part in any government that relies directly or indirectly on RAAM or other supports of terrorism,” had warned the leader of the list, Bezalel Smotrich, in early April.
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