Israel’s Finance Minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu, Avigdor Lieberman, said Friday that he rejected a Likud proposal to join the new Israeli government and stressed that he will only join this coalition if it is not led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Lieberman has detailed in statements to the Israeli newspaper ‘Yedioth Ahronoth’ that a Likud member contacted him after the elections of November 1 to ask if he would be willing to join the Executive that seeks to assemble ‘Bibi’ after his victory at the polls.
Thus, she has stressed that she has «no problem» in joining a Likud government, although she has demanded that Netanyahu withdraw from politics, while stressing that «there is nothing to talk about» with ultra-Orthodox parties such as Shas and United Torah Judaism, allies of the former Prime Minister’s party.
Lieberman, who was Netanyahu’s ally at the beginning of his career, has distanced himself from him in recent years and has 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 crisis resulted in four early elections in two years due to the parties’ inability to assemble coalitions in the absence of majorities. Although the cycle was closed in 2021 with the creation of a coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, internal tensions led to the calling of new early elections.
In these elections, the Likud-led bloc would have won 64 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, while the support of the current coalition – which had a minimum majority of 61 seats – has fallen to 51, paving the way for the return of ‘Bibi’ to power.
