Netanyahu, Scrambling to Save Job, Seeks Unity Government
Netanyahu’s Likud is two parliamentary seats behind Blue and White’s 33, according to Israeli media.
(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Israel’s top vote-getter to govern with him after an inconclusive repeat election, but his rival deflected the offer as the prospect of prolonged political wrangling loomed.
Netanyahu is scrambling to keep his job, and the call to team up with former military chief Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White bloc in a national unity government is a swift reversal from his election-night vow to lead a coalition of right-wing and religious parties.
The results of Tuesday’s election don’t allow that, so there is no choice but to form a unity government to avoid yet another revote, Netanyahu said in a video statement on Thursday.
“Benny, we must form a broad-based unity government, as early as today,” Netanyahu said. “The nation expects us, the two of us, to show responsibility, to cooperate.”
Gantz retorted that his bloc had won and that he would be the one to form a unity government.
No Clear Path
Neither Netanyahu nor Gantz has a clear path to a governing coalition. A near-final vote count gives Blue and White 33 of parliament’s 120 seats to 31 for Netanyahu’s Likud, according to Israeli media, but neither man has enough support from smaller parties to form a majority coalition.
Coalition talks are therefore liable to drag on for weeks -- and possibly produce a third election if negotiations collapse again, as they did after April 9 elections, leading to this week’s vote. Gantz prospectively has 57 lawmakers in his camp, versus 55 for Netanyahu, according to Channel 13.
Yair Lapid, a senior member of the Blue and White, made it clear Netanyahu couldn’t be part of a unity government led by Blue and White.
“One person is preventing the formation of a liberal unity government,” Lapid said, referring to the prime minister.
Before the vote, Gantz had vowed not to sit in a government with Netanyahu because of the corruption allegations against him. Israel’s attorney general plans to indict Netanyahu on three corruption cases unless the prime minister can convince him otherwise at a hearing scheduled for early October.
President Reuven Rivlin will begin consultations with the political parties on Sunday to decide who will get the first crack at forming a government. He’s said he’ll do all he can to prevent a third election, and welcomed Netanyahu’s call for a unity government.
Netanyahu’s call is “a sign of necessity,” said Professor Azi Lev-On, director of Ariel University’s Center for New Media, Politics and Society.
Since Netanyahu doesn’t have enough seats from his own party and allies to form a majority coalition, “he has to reach across the aisle and Blue and White is the closest party,” Lev-On said.
For Blue and White, however, the option is not attractive, since aside from the problem of Netanyahu’s corruption charges, it would find itself in the minority in a coalition with Likud and its allies, he said.
“It seem like there is a deadlock,” Lev-On said. “Someone will have to blink first.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Alisa Odenheimer in Jerusalem at aodenheimer@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shaji Mathew at shajimathew@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel, Paul Abelsky
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