Facing a looming deadline, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struggled to form a new government Sunday, and his party began preparing the nation for the possibility of new elections.
, a former army chief of staff, running in partnership with centrist Yair Lapid, a former minister of finance.Under Israeli law, Netanyahu was then tasked to form the next government by President Reuven Rivlin. But with no coalition agreement signed and less than three days left to form the government, Netanyahu may find himself unable to do so.
Publicly, the reason given for the current stalemate is an intractable conflict between Lieberman and the religious parties regarding a law on the military draft of ultra-Orthodox young men, most of whom are currently exempt from Israel’s universal draft of high-school graduates. Netanyahu, while campaigning, promised he would not support any legislation that could provide him with immunity while in office or otherwise lessen his legal burden.
Speakers returned again and again to the theme of Netanyahu’s attempts to “weaken Israel’s democratic space,” in the words of Ayman Odeh, chairman of the Arab-Jewish Hadash party and one of the evening’s speakers. Using refrains familiar to Americans, candidate Netanyahu had been able to fend off the claims by referring to the investigations into his activities as part of a “left-wing witch hunt” aimed at toppling his rule.
“No one is above the law,” she said. “We do not have a king in Israel. We do not have a czar or a sultan.”
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