End Of An Era Approaches As Opposition Close To Ousting Netanyahu

Israeli politics is set to experience is second political earthquake in less than a month, with PM Benjamin Netanyahu facing the prospect of being ousted from power after 12 years in office. This comes just weeks after Israel engaged in its most violent conflict with Hamas in Gaza in seven years.

• In an extraordinary turn of events, just weeks after Israeli forces launched air assaults on Gaza in retaliation to Hamas rocket attacks, a broad coalition of right-wing, centrist, leftist, and Arab parties agreed to form a majority gov't in order to achieve one thing: remove Netenyahu from power.
• The prospective gov't would include eight parties: the liberal Yesh Atid, the centrist Blue & White, the right-wing Yamina (whose leader Naftali Bennett is set to serve as PM for 2 years), the secular Zionist Yisrael Beiteinu, the centre-right New Hope, the centre-left Labor Party, the left-wing environmentalist Meretz, and the Arab Islamist Ra'am party (see chart below):

Chart 1. Israeli Knesset with Proposed Bennett Government on Left, Seats

Source: MNI

• This gov't would be the first in Israel's history to include an Arab Islamist party.
• The formation of the so-called 'change bloc' gov't is not assured. Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin (who hails from Netanyahu's Likud Party) could drag his feet on holding a confirmatory vote on the new gov't by a week from being officially told in a plenum session that such a vote is required, potentially delaying the gov'ts installation to 14 June.
• The Netanyahu gov't is also seeking to convince right-wing Knesset members in the prospective coalition to vote against a Bennett gov't due to the inclusion of an Arab party.
• Ra'am have supposedly demanded the repeal of a law on illegal building permits which it says hampers Arab Israelis while also saying there can be no more Israeli settlements built in the West Bank. For both Yamina, New Hope, and Yisrael Beiteinu, settlements in the West Bank are a key policy pillar, making agreement likely very difficult to reach.
• Given issues such as the one outlined above, the longevity of the 'change bloc' coalition could be called into question relatively quickly into its term.