You know, after muddling through four elections in two years inconclusively, I've been wondering for some time what it would take for the Israelis to finally oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This appears to be it, as eight parties led by the centrist Yesh Atid Party's leader Yair Lapid have just reached an agreement days ago to form a majority government that excludes the current Israeli prime minister's conservative Likud Party. Netanyahu and Co. will have until June 15th -- 11 days from now -- to try and peel off shaky votes in the Knesset (Israeli parliament), but such efforts, however robust, aren't expected to succeed.
The caveat is that this new coalition that Lapid has announced is a very, very broad, unity government type of one that spans the entire political spectrum from the far left to the far right, to the point of including democratic socialists as well as both an Arab-Israeli party and a hardline Jewish nationalist party that supports roughly full annexation of the West Bank and a little bit of everything in-between. Shared opposition to Netanyahu, and the view that he is corrupt and should be convicted of the charges currently against him in court, appears to be the only thread holding this fragile parliamentary alliance together and such a government's ability to do basic things like pass a budget are widely questioned, to which end there is suspicion that this incoming government may not last out its entire four-year term. However, it will be the first actual government Israel has had in more than two years now and that's not nothing.
Anyway, the point is that the timing of this sudden development hardly seems coincidental. The current Israeli prime minister has simply alienated too many people.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 05 June 2021
