Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke to the heads of all the Zionist parties in the Knesset over the past two days and invited them to coalition talks on the formation of the widest possible government.
Netanyahu hopes to form a coalition of at least 80 MKs in order to ensure that none of the parties in the coalition could topple him, including the 19-MK Yesh Atid faction. Netanyahu and Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid are expected to compromise on which parties would be included in the coalition.
Lapid and Netanyahu agree on including Bayit Yehudi and Kadima, but differ on the rest of the coalition. Netanyahu wants Shas and United Torah Judaism while Lapid prefers the Tzipi Livni Party.
Netanyahu is expected to give in on Livni being included and UTJ excluded, while Lapid will most likely agree to the inclusion of Shas. Those compromises would lead to the formation of an 81-MK coalition of Likud, Yesh Atid, Bayit Yehudi, Shas, Kadima, and the Tzipi Livni Party.
The prime minister\’s preliminary talks with the parties are intended to preempt their meetings with President Shimon Peres next week. Netanyahu wants to have a coalition in hand on paper before the parties make their recommendations to Peres on who should form the next government.
Netanyahu will then send his lawyers to meet with party representatives and draw up coalition agreements, with a goal of completing the formation of his new government by the time he leaves for Washington the first week of March.
In an effort to build the kind of partnership needed for a stable government, Netanyahu met Thursday at his official residence in Jerusalem with Lapid. In the two and a half hour meeting, they made a point of discussing policy issues, not portfolios.
"The Prime Minister and Mr. Lapid discussed the challenges facing the nation and ways to deal with them,” the two men said in a joint statement. “The meeting, which lasted two and half hours, was held in a very good atmosphere, and it was agreed that they would meet again soon.”
While Netanyahu already called Lapid and Shas and UTJ leaders the night of the election and he called Livni on Wednesday, he waited until Thursday to call Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett. Sources in Bayit Yehudi said they received an impression that the prime minister was trying to lower Bennett\’s asking price for joining the coalition.
Mofaz told the prime minister that he had a rare opportunity to form a centrist government. Netanyahu invited Labor and Meretz to meet with him, even though he knew they would not agree to enter his coalition.
"My faction will be a sharp and difficult opposition to you,” Yacimovich said she told Netanyahu. “He know better than others how deep the chasm is between our parties on socioeconomic issues. I won\’t contribute to the collapse of Israeli society for seats in the coalition.”
Netanyahu intends to form a smaller cabinet than in his last government at Lapid\’s request. Netanyahu has told Likud ministers that they will not all return in his next government.
While Yesh Atid has refused to discuss portfolios, Netanyahu wants Lapid as his foreign minister and not Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. One likely scenario is that Liberman would be told he could become finance minister if he overcomes his legal problems.
In radio interviews, Liberman tried to push Lapid to accept a socioeconomic portfolio like Finance rather than seek the Foreign Ministry.
“Someone who spoke all the time about the middle class, socioeconomic problems and rising prices should not choose to deal with the middle class in Greece or Portugal,” Liberman said.
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