Netanyahu struggles to form Israel government

Benjamin Netanyahu was on Wednesday still struggling to form a government, hours before a midnight deadline to gain majority backing for his new coalition was due to expire.

The Israeli prime minister's Likud party has signed coalition agreements with three other parties, securing 53 seats in the 120 seat Knesset.

However, by midday on Wednesday, Likud was still struggling to win the backing of Naftali Bennett's far-right, pro-settler Jewish Home. A deal would bring the support of eight more MPs, giving Mr Netanyahu's prospective cabinet a one-seat majority.

Mr Netanyahu, whose rightwing Likud won 30 seats in the March 17 election - the largest number of any in the Knesset - is coming to the end of the maximum 42 days allowed to form a new government. If he fails to do so, President Reuven Rivlin will hand the mandate to another MP - possibly Yitzhak Herzog, leader of the Zionist Union, the number two party in the Knesset.

Israeli news reports, citing unnamed sources in Likud and Jewish Home, said that Mr Netanyahu's party had offered Mr Bennett's party the education and agriculture ministries, but that Mr Bennett was holding out for a senior ministerial portfolio such as justice or foreign affairs.

Israel's Ynet news service reported on Wednesday that Likud had agreed to offer the justice portfolio to Ayelet Shaked, a Jewish Home MP.

A spokesman for Mr Bennett was not available for comment.

Analysts said that Mr Netanyahu's difficulties in the coalition talks bode ill for political stability in Israel, because even if the prime minister succeeds in forming a government, it will have only 61 seats. This would allow coalition parties or even individual MPs to hold policy making hostage.

"The underlying challenge this whole crisis demonstrates is how broken our electoral system is," said Yohanan Plesner, director of the Israel Democracy Institute. "It might sound familiar to somebody from the UK" - a reference to Britain's fractured electorate ahead of a national election on Thursday, which may result in a hung parliament.

Avigdor Lieberman, the ultranationalist foreign minister in Mr Netanyahu's last two cabinets, threw a wrench into the coalition-building process on Monday when he resigned from his post and said he would not join the next government because of ideological differences over its proposed make-up. His Yisrael Beiteinu party would have given Mr Netanyahu's mooted cabinet six more Knesset seats, making for a more comfortable majority of 67.

Likud has so far signed coalition agreements with Kulanu, a new centre-right party headed by former communications minister Moshe Kahlon, and Shas and United Torah Judaism, two parties representing ultra-Orthodox Jews.

In the closing days of the election campaign in March, Mr Netanyahu angered Mr Bennett and his supporters by pitching openly for their far-right voters, with statements dismissing a two-state solution and warning of Arab Israeli citizens funded by leftwing groups coming to the polls "in droves".

Jewish Home lost four of the 12 seats it held in the last Knesset as some of its voters switched to Likud.

A senior member of Mr Herzog's party said on Wednesday that there was still a chance that the centre-left leader, who was a frontrunner in polling ahead of the election, might become Israel's next prime minister.

"If Netanyahu has no government by midnight, I call on all the relevant parties to recommend to the president that Herzog put together a coalition," Shelly Yachimovich, a former leader of the Labour party, as the Zionist Union used to be known, told Israel's Army Radio. "It is definitely an option."

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation