President Reuven Rivlin has rejected Blue and White leader Benny Gantz’s request for a two week extension to try to form a grand coalition government with Likud as the deadline to do so runs out on Monday at midnight, The Times of Israel has reported, citing a statement by the president’s office.
Gantz requested the extension on Saturday, saying he needed more time to try to form the coalition. “The political, health and social crisis have brought me to the decision that even at a heavy political and personal price, I will do all I can to establish a government with the Likud,” Gantz wrote in a letter addressed to Rivlin which was published by Israeli media.
Rivlin’s office said Sunday that the president made the decision not to extend the deadline after speaking to both leaders, with Netanyahu reportedly telling him that Likud and Blue and White were nowhere close to an agreement.
Rivlin: The mandate will return to the Knesset: President rejects Gantz's request to extend mandate, but neither will mandate be passed to Netanyahu. https://t.co/gV9ANu4haT ArutzSheva pic.twitter.com/qLOcBdXCOA
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Likud and Blue and White began talks on a grand coalition last month, after legislative elections saw Likud win 36 seats and Blue and White get 33 seats in Israel’s 120 seat parliament, with neither party’s allies securing enough votes to enable them to form a 61 seat majority. The unprecedented deadlock became the third consecutive time that neither major bloc managed to win a majority, with elections also held in April and September of 2019 similarly ending in a stalemate.
Under the terms of the grand coalition talks, Netanyahu and Gantz would each have a year-and-a-half turn as prime minister. Gantz’s effort to form an emergency government with Netanyahu has already cost him politically, with the party splintering as a result of his ‘betrayal’ to agree to ally with Likud.
Rivlin, who has previously shown signs of his annoyance over the deadlock, warned Sunday that if Netanyahu and Gantz couldn’t reach an agreement by Monday at midnight, “the task of forming the government will return to the Knesset and a period of 21 days will begin during which Knesset members can form a majority to recommend an agree-don candidate to form a government, who would have 14 days to do so.”
Last year, Rivlin complained that Israel’s seemingly-never-ending cycle of elections was “already too much democracy,” and said that Israeli politicians seemed to prefer “staying up all night and going crazy” instead of coming together and compromising to form a government in “a troubled time” for the country.
A failure by the country’s political forces to reach a compromise could to a fourth consecutive election later this year. The grand coalition negotiations following the March 2020 vote were the first of their kind. After the April and September 2019 elections, Likud and Blue and White instead tried to cobble together coalitions with their ideological allies, with neither proving to have enough support, particularly after former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party categorically refused to join either coalition.
