Israeli president orders Netanyahu to form a government Imagine if the world only had 100 inhabitants. That would be their inhabitants

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been given the task of forming the new government. President Izchak Herzog officially gave the mandate to the 73-year-old election winner on Sunday. Of all the candidates, Netanyahu has the best chance of forming a government, the president said at the meeting in Jerusalem. He now has four weeks to do so. However, the leader of the right-wing conservative Likud party aims to forge the coalition much earlier.

Negotiations with its potential coalition partners, including the far-right alliance of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, are already underway. Your Religious Zionist Party wants to make sweeping changes, including a weakening of the judiciary.

Netanyahu stressed that he will be prime minister to all citizens of Israel and will work to form a responsible government. “The people have clearly chosen a government under my leadership,” said Netanyahu, who is facing a corruption trial. But there are also naysayers who are scaring people with ominous predictions about the impending “end of democracy” in Israel, he said. This will not happen.

Netanyahu’s right-wing religious camp won 64 of the 120 seats in the Nov. 1 parliamentary election. It was Israel’s fifth election in three and a half years. Incumbent Prime Minister Jair Lapid’s liberal Future Party came second to Netanyahu’s Likud party.

After last year’s elections, Netanyahu was the first to be given the mandate to form a government, but failed. That’s when Lapid came into play, initially overthrowing Naftali Bennett as prime minister. However, the coalition of right-to-left parties fell apart in June after internal disputes. Minister of Foreign Affairs Lapid then took over the position of head of government.

If Netanyahu succeeds in forming a government this time, it would be his second return to the post of prime minister. In the history of Israel no one has held office longer than he. The right-wing conservative politician was prime minister from 1996 to 1999, then again continuously from 2009 to 2021.

(sda/dpa)