Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an unusual offer on Monday in an attempt to swear in a new right-wing government, calling on Yamina leader Naftali Bennett to serve alongside him in a rotating premiership, only to be rebuffed by the latter.
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Netanyahu said that it was imperative that Israelis stop with the boycotting of specific people and parties, "and we must make sure the infighting within the right does not prevent a right-wing government from being formed; we must not let the disaster of the Left and Oslo Accords repeat itself."
Netanyahu then made the suggestion that Bennett would serve as prime minister with almost immediate effect: "I told him that in order to prevent the rise of the left-wing government I would agree to his suggestion of having a rotation deal in which he would serve as prime minister for the first year. The Yamina faction members would be integrated into the Knesset and the government, and if God forbid, we end up failing to form a government we will run on a joint ticket [in an early election] with each party preserving its relative strength."
Netanyahu warned in his post on Sunday that a left-wing government would "not stop the deal with Iran, because many of its would-be members support this dangerous deal, and it would not prevent the uprooting of settlement."
Bennett shot back slowly after Netanyahu's post, saying, "I never asked for the premiership, I just asked Netanyahu to form a right-wing government, which we would have supported."
After the April 2020 election, Netanyahu chose to form a power-sharing deal with Blue and White leader Benny Gantz in which they would each get a turn at serving as prime minister for the next 4 years, but that agreement collapsed several months later and Israel once again had a general election, culminating with the March 23 vote.
That election ended with neither the Right nor the Left having a majority, leading to a real possibility that a large swath of the Knesset would form an alliance to unseat Netanyahu.
Israel Hayom's Yehuda Shlezinger was the first to report about the prospective deal between Netanyahu and Bennett in early April.
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