Israeli opposition parties finalize agreements to unseat Netanyahu
The broad alliance signed deals ahead of Sunday's vote of confidence in the incoming Israeli government.
The eight parties forming the incoming Israeli government finalized their agreements on Friday, two days before the expected swearing-in of a new ruling coalition that will unseat Israel’s long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Prime Minister-designate Naftali Bennett, whose right-wing Yamina party was the last to sign an agreement with Yair Lapid's centrist Yesh Atid, said on Friday that the signings have brought Israel’s two-and-a-half-year political crisis to an end.
“We are faced with great challenges and all the citizens of Israel are looking to us with hope,” Bennett said in a joint statement from Yamina and Yesh Atid. “The government will work for all the Israeli public — religious, secular, ultra-Orthodox, Arab — without exception, as one.”
As opposition leader Lapid cobbled together an ideologically diverse alliance of parties that share little in common beyond their goal of ending Netanyahu’s 12-year grip on power. The unlikely coalition includes right-wing Yamina, New Hope and Yisrael Beitenu, centrist Yesh Atid, the center-left Blue and White Party and Israeli Labor, left-wing Meretz and the Arab Ra’am.
