Anxiety grows in Israel as Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu prepares for one last fight to remain in power and extend his 12 consecutive years of rule.
Gatekeepers News reports that Israel’s 120-seat Parliament will decide Netanyahu’s fate today (Sunday, 13 June 2021) and could mean his final weekend to power grip.
“The debate and vote on the new government will take place Sunday, June 13, 2021, during a special session of parliament,” Israel’s parliament Speaker, Yariv Levin had earlier announced.
Nationalist Naftali Bennett would emerge as new Israeli Prime Minister and be sworn in immediately if Netanyahu loses today.
Netanyahu, in the past week, accused Bennett, of carrying out “the greatest election fraud in the history of the country” and establishing a “dangerous” government.
The Prime Minister’s Likud party on Thursday slightly doused the claims of election fraud saying “Bennett hijacked votes from the right and shifted them to the left in direct contradiction to his [campaign] pledges. If this isn’t fraud we don’t know what is,” via Twitter.
The Likud, in a Twitter thread shared by Netanyahu, assured that there would be a peaceful transition of power to a new government.
“There always has been a peaceful transfer of power in Israel and there will always be,” the Likud wrote, blaming unnamed others for distorting Netanyahu’s words.
Benjamin Netanyahu
Netanyahu has frequently represented himself as the only one who can keep Israel safe from enemies in Iran, Gaza and Lebanon.
As part of his ongoing pressure campaign against Bennett, Netanyahu tweeted earlier this week, “Whoever is right does not vote for a left-wing government, and whoever is for a left-wing government is not right.”
On Sunday, Bennett urged Netanyahu to support an orderly transition of power and not to leave “scorched earth” behind him.
“This is not a catastrophe, this is not a disaster. It is a change of government. An ordinary and usual event in any democratic country,” Bennett said at a press conference on Sunday.
“The system in the state of Israel is not monarchical. No one has a monopoly on power.”
Gatekeepers News reports that eight different parties collaborated to oust Netanyahu and there will be a debate that is expected to last for a few hours as Israel’s longest-serving PM and his allies will try to find pressure points to pull one party away from another.
