Former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu met Monday in Tel Aviv with far-right Itamar Ben Gvir in an attempt to gather support to form a right-wing coalition after Yisrael Beitenu’s refusal.
Ben Gvir, who presides Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) and participated in the last elections together with Religious Zionism, a party led by Bezalel Smotrich, which won 14 seats, has made it a condition for entering Netanyahu’s future new government to hold the Public Security portfolio, according to the newspaper ‘The Times of Israel’.
This meeting takes place after Netanyahu, who won 32 seats in the elections, has avoided being photographed with the far-right during the whole electoral campaign, and even had several clashes with Ben Gvir.
Among them, an event held in the village Kfar Chabad stands out, where Netanyahu refused to go to the stage due to the presence of the ultra-right-winger and remained in his car while the organizers tried to convince the leader of Otzma Yehudit to leave the place, according to the newspaper ‘Haaretz’.
Netanyahu met separately yesterday with Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich in Jerusalem, in an attempt to form a three-way alliance following the refusal of Israel’s Finance Minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu, Avigdor Lieberman.
Lieberman, who was an ally of Netanyahu early in his career, has distanced himself from him in recent years and refused to join forces with him and other ultra-Orthodox parties, which in 2018 opposed his draft law on conscription of members of this community.
The right-wing bloc akin to Netanyahu won an absolute majority in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, after the legislative elections, according to the official count, with Likud and its partners holding some 65 of the 120 seats in the House. The Electoral Commission reported that the far-right Religious Zionism won 14 seats in coalition with Otzma Yehudit, an unprecedented milestone in the history of the extreme right in Israel.
