Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid is warming up to the idea of becoming
Finance Minister, party sources said on Saturday, a week before Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s deadline to form a government.
Lapid
and Netanyahu met on Friday, for talks their spokeswomen called
“positive, with much progress made,” and on Saturday, in a meeting that
was still ongoing.
Likud Beytenu and Bayit Yehudi’s negotiating
teams also met on Saturday night. The final coalition will most likely
be comprised of 23-24 ministers, with twelve from Likud Beytenu, five or
six from Yesh Atid, three from the Bayit Yehudi, two from Hatnua and
one from Kadima.
It is unlikely that there will be any new
ministers from the Likud, and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz is
expected to stay in his position, as are Yisrael Beytenu’s Public
Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich, Immigration and Absorption
Minister Sofa Landver,
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