Headlines
Israeli president assigns Netanyahu to form next government
Jerusalem, March 26
Israeli President Reuven
Rivlin has announced that he is formally tasking incumbent Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the role of forming the upcoming
government, following last week's elections.
Rivlin, who received
the official results of last Tuesday's elections from the head of the
Central Elections Committee Justice Salim Jubran earlier on Wednesday,
told reporters in his Jerusalem chambers that the people of Israel
talked "loud and clear" in the elections, giving Netanyahu's right wing
Likud party 30 out of 120 seats in the upcoming Knesset (parliament),
Xinhua reported.
"There are three critical tasks the upcoming
government must handle," Rivlin said at a joint press conference with
Netanyahu in Jerusalem. "Solidifying the close relationship we have with
our greatest ally the US, mending the rifts among sectors in the
Israeli society which have intensified in the past elections campaign,
and maintaining a stable government that would rule for its entire
term," Rivlin said.
Rivlin implicitly criticized Netanyahu who,
on election day, urged his voters to head to the polls, charging "droves
of Arabs" are bussed to the polls to topple his regime by left-wing
organisations.
"Harsh things were said in this campaign that shouldn't have been said," Rivlin said.
Earlier
on Wednesday, after receiving the results of the elections, Rivlin made
an explicit reference to Netanyahu's contentious statement, saying that
"those who are afraid of votes in a ballot box will eventually see
stones thrown in the street," adding that it is "awful" that the
democratic duty to vote could be shown to be as a "curse."
Netanyahu,
on his part, said he sees himself as prime minister of all of Israel's
citizens and that he would work to mend the rifts in the Israeli
society. He also called Israelis to "put the elections behind us."
The
incumbent prime minister said he would work with his government on the
economic level, to lower the housing and food prices and dismantle
market monopolies, and that Israel would work to solidify its
relationship with the US.
He also said Israel seeks peace with
its Palestinian neighbors and that there's a horizon of cooperation with
other Arab countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia, amid the
objection to the upcoming deal over Iran's nuclear program, which he
again criticized as "bad."
The already rocky relations between
Israel and the United States had been in the spotlight in recent days,
with US President Barack Obama criticizing Netanyahu for his election
campaign statement, saying no Palestinian state will be established if
he will be elected to another term in office.
Netanyahu has tried
to backtrack off the statement on interview to US media outlets, but
Obama said the US administration would have to reevaluate its approach
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on its resolution, possibly
threatening to remove the diplomatic shield it provided to Israel on
international forums.
Throughout Sunday and Monday, Rivlin met
with members of the Israeli political parties in order to get their
recommendations on which politician has the best odds of forming a
government, amid the results of the elections.
As expected, 67
members of parliament from the right wing and ultra-Orthodox parties
recommended Netanyahu, whose Likud party received 30 (out of 120) seats
in the upcoming parliament, as opposed to the center-left's Zionist
Union party, which got 24 seats.
Twenty-nine members of parliament recommended the Zionist Union's leader Isaac Herzog.
Netanyahu
has four weeks to form his government, following negotiations with the
right wing and religious parties who backed his candidacy.
The
incumbent prime minister announced on Tuesday that he would appoint
former Likud minister and head of the centrist Kulanu (all of us) party
Moshe Kahlon, whose party won 10 seats in the elections, to the post of
finance minister.
Kahlon, who led a reform in the mobile
cellphones market during his tenure as communications minister in
Netanyahu's 2009-2013 government, has campaigned over Israel's
socioeconomic hardships and promised to fight to better the economic
condition of the Israeli middle class.
Netanyahu and parliament
members of the religious United Torah Judaism party agreed on principle
that the party will receive both the health ministry portfolio and the
chairing the Knesset's (parliament) Finance Committee, the Globes
financial daily reported Wednesday.
It also appears that the
leader of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas will receive the position of
Interior Ministry, the channel 2 news reported.
Israel Beytenu
and the Jewish Home demand high-profile portfolios like the defense
ministry and the foreign ministry, which Likud members reportedly want
to keep within the ranks of the party.
The Channel 2 news
reported Netanyahu would try to keep top portfolios for members of his
Likud party, including the Defense Ministry which he designates to
outgoing Defense Minister Moshe Ya' alon.