Otherwise, his next chance will come when the government rotates its leadership in 2023, bringing the centrist Yair Lapid to power and perhaps giving his nationalist coalition partners a reason to bolt.Īviv Bushinsky, a former Netanyahu aide, said Netanyahu is better off biding his time as opposition leader, a public platform from which he can contest the legal charges and ratchet up support from constituents. Netanyahu’s best hope is that the coalition, made up of eight ideologically diverse parties, implodes over its own contradictions. Coalition parties are struggling in the polls and none is likely to want to topple the government and trigger new elections, for now. Now that it has passed, the government - established with the goal of ousting Netanyahu - appears to have bought itself some time. He’s incapable of giving up.”įailure to pass the budget before November 14 would have resulted in the dissolution of the government and snap elections - giving Netanyahu, who is rising in the polls, a chance at redemption. “It changes the timeframe for him,“ said Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist at the left-leaning Haaretz daily and Netanyahu biographer.
The first budget to be passed in three years, during which a prolonged period of political gridlock brought four divisive elections, was a stress test for Israel’s fractious coalition government. The man whose shadow loomed so large for so long over Israel, whose rule sparked both mass protests and cult-like devotion, has been relegated to the backbenches as opposition leader, far from the levers of power and exposed to serious corruption charges. TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu watched from the sidelines Thursday as the government that toppled him after 12 years in power passed a national budget, dealing a major blow to his hopes of a swift return to the country’s top office.
0 kommentar(er)
