After receiving recommendations from parties representing 61 of the 120 members of Knesset in favor of inviting Blue & White leader Benny Gantz to form a government, President Reuven Rivlin has summoned Gantz and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu to an urgent meeting this evening to discuss the possibility of forming a government immediately. The meeting is due to start at 19:30. Meanwhile, he has said that he will give the mandate to form a new government to Gantz tomorrow.
What tilted the balance in favor of Gantz is that all the factions making up the Joint Arab List, including radical Balad faction, recommended him. The Joint Arab List won fifteen Knesset seats in the election on March 2.
The president will try to pressure Gantz and Netanyahu to form a national emergency government or a national unity government. Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman proposed that they should set up a government consisting of the two major parties only. This would mean dismantling Netanyahu's right-wing block, which is something that it is hard to see him doing.
Apart from the Joint Arab List, none of the parties whose leaders spoke to the president is ruling out the possibility of a national emergency government, with a view to a unity government on a more permanent footing.
Gantz himself will try to persuade Liberman and the two renegade members of his own party, Zvi Hauser and Yoaz Hendel, to withdraw their opposition to a government supported by the Joint Arab List, so that at least in principle he will have the possibility of forming a government himself as a means of bringing pressure to bear on Netanyahu.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 15, 2020
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