Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received an official mandate on Sunday (13) to form a new government and promised he would seek national consensus after an election in which far-right Jews emerged, causing concern at home and abroad.
Tasking Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, with building the next coalition, President Isaac Herzog noted that the candidate received enough recommendations from like-minded parties to secure 64 of parliament’s 120 seats.
That puts conservative Netanyahu on the path to one of the most stable governments in years, after an 18-month hiatus during which he was replaced by a rare but fragile alliance of centrist, liberal, nationalist and Arab politicians.
In televised remarks from the president’s residence in Jerusalem, Netanyahu pledged to form “a stable, successful, accountable and dedicated government that will work for the benefit of all residents of the state of Israel.”
Netanyahu said there was already broad agreement on Israel’s Jewish identity, but that individual freedoms should also be maintained – an apparent allusion to its 21% Arab minority as well as secular liberals.
Reiterating two of his long-held convictions, he promised more free-market reforms to lower the cost of living and said “we must act decisively against Iran’s belligerence and, above all, thwart its effort to arm itself with nuclear weapons.” , which has direct designs against our existence”.
The new government appears to be the most right-wing in Israel’s history, with the ultranationalist Religious Zionism party, whose leaders oppose the Palestinian state, want to annex the occupied West Bank and have been anti-LGBT in the past.
One of them, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement against Arabs and supporting terrorism. He says he is now reformed, but still calls for harsh repressions against those he considers terrorists or traitors.
Herzog noted Netanyahu’s trial but said it did not pose any legal obstacles to his return to prime minister.
Source: CNN Brasil
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