OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel’s president will begin
consultations with political parties next Monday on their preferred candidate
to try to form a government, a spokesman said, after a fourth election in two
years ended in another stalemate.
اضافة اعلان
After hearing the parties’ recommendations, President Reuven
Rivlin will assign the coalition-building task to one of the candidates by
April 7, a spokesman said.
A final tally from the March 23 election showed Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and kindred factions in control
of 52 seats in the 120-member parliament. A potential opposition grouping took
57 seats.
With no easy path to a governing majority, Netanyahu’s
political fate may depend on the leaders of two wild-card parties, the
far-right Yamina led by ex-defense minister Naftali Bennett and an Arab
Islamist faction led by Mansour Abbas.
A patchwork opposition bloc of left-wing, centrist, and
rightist parties that also came up short of a majority has made no announcement
of any alliance or who might lead it.
Of all the potential parties in such a coalition, centrist
Yesh Atid, headed by former finance minister Yair Lapid, won the most legislative
seats, 17, in last Tuesday’s vote.
Likud captured the most seats in the election, 30, but
Rivlin is under no legal obligation to task Netanyahu with putting together a
government and can pick another candidate instead.
Whoever Rivlin nominates will have have up to 42 days to try
to form an administration before the president assigns the task to someone
else. If the second candidate fails, Rivlin can ask parliament to try to choose
someone. If that proves unsuccessful, Israel would head into a fifth election.
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