President Isaac Herzog on Friday granted Likud leader and Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu 10 additional days to finish forming a government.
The presumed incoming prime minister formally asked Herzog for the maximal extension of two weeks on Thursday, saying that the complexity of cobbling together his coalition required extra time.
Netanyahu’s 28-day mandate to assemble a government was set to expire at midnight on Sunday night, and he will now have until December 21 to form a government.
“These are complex times for Israeli society as differences over core issues threaten to stoke violence and blind hatred,” the president said in a letter addressed to Netanyahu.
Herzog urged Netanyahu to form a government that will serve the entire nation and not just a specific sector or group, and expressed hope that the coalition will maintain “dignified and responsible discourse between the executive, legislative and judicial branches.”
With the contours of his alliance essentially known even before the November 1 vote, Netanyahu had sought to put together a governing coalition within days. Instead, he has found himself mired in squabbles with the far-right and religious parties that make up his bloc of supporters in the Knesset.
Likud leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu seen after coalition talks with Shas chairman MK Aryeh Deri and Religious Zionism party head MK Bezalel Smotrich outside a hotel in Jerusalem, December 5, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
In his letter to Herzog on Thursday, Netanyahu noted his Likud party had signed tentative deals with all the parties expected to join his coalition, but issues remained regarding the distribution of ministerial and Knesset committee assignments.
Overnight Wednesday-Thursday, Likud reached an agreement with Shascompleting the last of such deals with Netanyahu’s coalition partners.
However, like the agreements Likud has signed with its other coalition partners United Torah Judaism, Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit and Noamthe agreement with Shas was only an interim deal and all of the parties are still negotiating terms of their final coalition agreements so the next government can be sworn in.
Netanyahu is now expected to attempt a complicated legislative blitz before his government is sworn in, to enable the myriad agreements he has made to be honored — such as allowing the appointment of Shas leader Aryeh Deri, who was convicted of tax offenses earlier this year, as a minister.
Earlier Friday, outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid slammed the presumed incoming government, calling it “insane” and its leader, Netanyahu, “weak,” claiming the Likud leader was allowing extremists to extort him and create “a government unable to govern.”
Netanyahu and the right-religious bloc he leads won 64 of the 120 Knesset seats in general elections last month.
