Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will receive an endorsement from 80 MK-elects
over the next two days as the 12 factions in the incoming Knesset make their
recommendations to President Shimon Peres.
Peres will receive the
official results of last Tuesday’s election on Wednesday evening from the head
of the Central Elections Committee, Justice Elyakim Rubinstein. The president
will receive delegations on Wednesday night from the two largest Knesset
factions, Likud Beytenu and Yesh Atid. He will hold consultations with the
remaining 10 factions from the largest to the smallest on Thursday and most
likely formally grant Netanyahu the right to form the government on
Friday.
Netanyahu will receive recommendations from Yesh Atid and the
four factions on the Right.
Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid and the party’s
incoming MKs Mickey Levy and Pnina Tamnu-Shata intend to tell Peres that they
endorse Netanyahu because they believe the largest party should form the
government.
Labor (15 seats) and The Tzipi Livni Party (6) are not
expected to recommend any candidate, but a source tied to Livni said there was a
small chance that she would recommend herself, in order to keep her promise that
she would recommend the leader of one of the parties in the Center-Left
bloc.
From the moment that Peres entrusts Netanyahu with forming a
coalition, he will have 28 days to form a new government.
If an extension
is required, the president has the authority to grant an additional 14
days.
Netanyahu received an extension when he formed his last coalition
four years ago. But this time, the prime minister has added incentive to
complete coalition talks on time and present his government to Peres by February
28.
Three days after that, the national policy conference of the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee will begin in Washington. Netanyahu has
not confirmed his participation in the event due to the coalition talks. But if
the negotiations run smoothly and Netanyahu forms a coalition on time, he will
be able to attend the conference and meet with US President Barack Obama in
Washington with a new government behind him.
“Any prime minister wants to
finish coalition negotiations within a week,” a senior Likud politician close to
Netanyahu said. “There will be ups and downs. Many parties want to be in the
coalition, but that does not make them more flexible.”
Lapid met with
Bayit Yehudi chairman Naftali Bennett on Tuesday for the first time since the
election to coordinate their strategy for the talks. Spokeswomen for the two
party leaders refused to disclose any details of the meeting or even confirm
that it took place.
Bayit Yehudi faction chairman Uri Orbach said
following a meeting of his party’s MK-elects in Ariel that Netanyahu could not
take his party for granted.
“We are not a faction of three MKs that would
be satisfied with just the Science and Technology Ministry like last time,”
Orbach said. “We are not joining at any price without conditions.”
Shas
and United Torah Judaism leaders also met on Tuesday to discuss their strategy
for coalition negotiations.
UTJ MK Yisrael Eichler’s office said that serious efforts were under way with Shas “to form a political bloc against
the attempts to draft yeshiva students,” adding that the two parties were also
trying to enlist the support of Bayit Yehudi toward this goal.
Another
party official said that although the two parties would be negotiating
separately within the official coalition negotiations, they may appoint a joint
team to discuss the issue of haredi enlistment. He added that the party sees
very little possibility of sitting together with Yesh Atid.
“It is in
Netanyahu’s hands, but if Lapid wants to drag yeshiva students out of the study
hall then we wont be able to join a coalition with him,” he said, highlighting
what he called the haredi parties’ political value to the prime minister as
reliable coalition partners during the last government.
Senior UTJ MK
Moshe Gafni pointed out on Tuesday that the combined haredi representation in
the new Knesset – 18 MKs – is very close to Yesh Atid’s 19, and party sources
expressed optimism that Netanyahu may form a coalition without Lapid’s
party.
Following reports that Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon
(Likud) met recently with Gafni, one UTJ official said that Ya’alon’s proposal
for increasing haredi enlistment in national service, made last year, was
something the party could live with.
Outgoing coalition chairman Ze’ev
Elkin (Likud) said he already received an impression before the 18th Knesset was
dissolved that UTJ would accept the Ya’alon plan as a last resort, even though
it did not like it.
A Shas source noted that his party was able to make
more concessions than UTJ on the issue of enlistment, whose “red lines are
closer and more stringent than ours.”
Nevertheless, he said, the purpose
of the recent leadership meetings was “to coordinate positions” on the issue
ahead of the negotiations.
Greer Fay Cashman contributed to this report.