Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former ally on Sunday said he would seek to form a coalition government with the Israeli leader’s opponents, taking a major step toward ending the rule of the longtime premier.
The dramatic announcement by Naftali Bennett, leader of the small hardline Yamina party, set the stage for a series of steps that could push Netanyahu and his dominant Likud party into the opposition in the coming week.
In a televised address Sunday, Bennett invited centrist opposition figure Yair Lapid to join forces in an attempt to form a governing coalition — a move that, if successful, would break the two-year political deadlock that has enabled Netanyahu to cling to power even while contesting corruption charges against him in court.
The two challengers make for an oddball alliance: Lapid, 57, is a secular Jew and former television personality, while Bennett, 49, has been a standard-bearer for the Jewish settlement movement and has aligned himself with devoutly religious political groupings.
A Palestine Liberation Organization official said after Bennett’s speech that the prospective government would be “extreme rightist” and no different than administrations headed by Netanyahu.
Israel has held four elections since April 2019 that ended with no clear winner and left Netanyahu and his rivals short of a parliamentary majority, with the veteran leader remaining in office as head of a caretaker government.
