Top challengers to take on Netanyahu
JERUSALEM:ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strongest challengers in an election in April joined forces on Thursday, adding more potency to the centrist candidates’ bid to end the right-wing leader’s decade in power.
In anticipation of the announcement of a new alliance between former military chief Benny Gantz’ Resilience party and ex-finance minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid faction, Netanyahu engineered a merger of farright parties on Wednesday that could help him build a governing coalition after the ballot.
Resilience, in a statement, said Gantz, Lapid and Moshe Yaalon, a former defence minister, “decided to establish a joint list that will comprise the new Israeli ruling party”.
Gantz and Lapid, who met overnight, agreed on a “rotation for the prime minister’s post” in which Gantz would hold office for the first two-and-a-half years of a new government’s term before Lapid took over.
In their campaigns, both candidates have portrayed Netanyahu, who will become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister this summer if he wins the April 9 ballot, as haughty with power and criminally corrupt.
But even as Netanyahu faces possible indictment in three corruption investigations, opinion polls have predicted his Likud party will take about 30 seats in the 120-member Parliament, putting him on track to form a rightist coalition similar to the one he now heads.