Coronavirus pandemic pushes Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz to sign unity government deal
- It took crisis to end political deadlock after three consecutive elections failed to produce clear victor
- Netanyahu will serve as PM for 18 months, and Gantz will take over from October 2021
Israelis have gone to the ballot boxes three times within one year – and three times there was no clear winner.
And after three election campaigns of mutual blasting, it took the coronavirus to get arch-rivals Benny Gantz and Benjamin Netanyahu to agree on an emergency government of national unity between Gantz's centrist Blue and White and Netanyahu's conservative Likud lists.
Gantz gave up on his principle, held for over a year, never to join any government led by a prime minister facing corruption charges.
Under the unity agreement, Netanyahu, whose Likud won 36 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, is to serve as prime minister for the first 18 months. Gantz would take over from October 2021.
While some in Israel have praised Gantz as “brave” for choosing the “lesser evil”, others have ridiculed the former military chief of staff, who lacks political experience, saying that he had dealt a fatal blow to his image of integrity.
Two opposition lawmakers, Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid party and Moshe Ya'alon of Telem, who for over a year had been Gantz's political partners, have expressed outrage and deep disappointment.