Leaders of some center-left political parties are considering a plan to support Naftali Bennett, head of the right-wing Yamina party, for prime minister, if this is necessary to deprive Benjamin Netanyahu of the majority after the March 23 elections, according to with a Friday report.
The move would aim to remove Bennett from a right-wing religious coalition led by Netanyahu.
The offer would be for Bennett to serve as prime minister for a year in a rotating deal, the Channel 13 report said, without citing sources. The report did not say with whom Bennett would rotate the potential deal, but it would probably be the leader of Yesh Atid, Yair Lapid, or Gideon Sa’ar, head of the New Hope party.
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The deal would only be on the table if Netanyahu’s coalition – including his Likud party, United Torah Judaism, Shas and Religious Zionism – won enough seats to form a majority of 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset with the support of Yamina, the report said.
The report did not identify which center-left parties were discussing the agreement, but the negotiations would presumably involve Yesh Atid and Blue and White.
Bennett announced his own candidacy for prime minister and did not rule out the possibility of cooperating with the anti-Netanyahu bloc or the potential Netanyahu coalition, but said he would not have a seat in a government led by Lapid.
Polls predict Lapid’s Yesh Atid faction to be the second largest party after the election with about 20 seats, following Netanyahu’s Likud, with about 29 seats. New Hope and Yamina have voted for about 11-14 seats.
MK Yair Lapid attends a Knesset plenary session at the Knesset in Jerusalem on August 24, 2020 (Oren Ben Hakoon / POOL)
Neither pro or anti-Netanyahu camps have a clear path for the majority, according to recent research.
A Thursday poll predicted that Netanyahu and his religious allies would win 47 seats, with Likud winning the majority of seats, 29.
The Islamic party Ra’am, which also did not rule out support for Netanyahu, was expected to win four, and Yamina, 11. If those two parties supported Netanyahu, that would guarantee the prime minister a 62-seat majority, according to the poll. But it would also force him to base his coalition on the support of a non-Zionist Arab party – a move he has repeatedly attacked his rivals for allegedly persecuting, and which is unlikely to please some of his far-right partners.
Meanwhile, in the survey, the anti-Netanyahu camp had 58 seats. Assuming that the Joint List of Arab majority is left out of any coalition, that the bloc’s constituent parties are able to cover up their main ideological differences and that Yamina participates, she could form a coalition of 61, placing Bennett as a potential kingmaker.
The poll showed that the left-wing Meretz party failed to cross the electoral threshold.
Channel 12 analyst Rina Matsliah suggested on Friday that Bennett would not refuse the premier role if offered, but would probably require that certain parties like the Joint List, Meretz and Yisrael Beytenu not be part of his government and instead addition, to replace them with the Religious Zionism party, without the extremist candidate from the Itamar Ben Gvir slate of the Otzma Yehudit faction.
National elections – the fourth in two years – were called after the power-sharing government Likud and Blue and White failed to agree on a budget by the 23 December deadline. The election, like the previous three votes, is largely seen as a referendum on the Netanyahu government amid the ongoing trial on corruption charges, as well as his government’s mixed success in combating the pandemic.
