The right-wing conservative clearly won the election in November.
(Photo: dpa)
Tel Aviv So far, Benjamin Netanyahu has always ensured that liberal parties are represented in his cabinet alongside radical forces. In the future, the designated Israeli prime minister will be pursuing a new strategy and relying entirely on extremists and ultra-Orthodox who want to change the face of the country.
Bibi, as he is known by friends and foes alike, dominated Israeli politics for years. In his earlier reign, he turned Israel and its once socialist-crusted economy inside out. The economy, which was primarily known for the export of Jaffa oranges after the founding of the state, is now a high-tech world power. Anyone who says Israel also says innovation and a start-up nation.
With him, however, one of the presumably most corrupt politicians that Israel has ever known will become prime minister again. And this superlative means something in a country in which finance and interior ministers, prime ministers and numerous mayors have already had to go to prison because they had embezzled funds or been convicted of corruption.
Prosecutors have accused Netanyahu of accepting gifts from billionaires. In addition, he had bought himself a friendly reporting. The court proceedings are not yet over.
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Netanyahu’s future allies know that he expects his position as head of government to give him better chances of being acquitted in the corruption trials against him. And so they dashed Netanyahu’s hopes of forming a coalition quickly and easily.
Since his clear victory in the elections on November 1, they have confronted him with new demands almost every day: no football games on Shabbat, new settlements in the West Bank, changes to the judicial system and the Supreme Court, or more money for ultra-Orthodox schools, where neither Mathematics is still taught in English. In return for their support, they claim significantly more power and budgetary resources.
The politician has been criticized for allegations of corruption.
(Photo: IMAGO/APAimages)
The 73-year-old, who has been Prime Minister with interruptions for 15 years, will therefore be a new “Bibi”. In interviews with foreign media, he appears to be the old man and shows himself from the liberal side. But domestically, where he has not given any interviews for weeks, he is allowing right-wing extremists and orthodox forces to take control of power.
Netanyahu makes tax dodgers finance minister
Even voters in his right-wing conservative Likud party and prominent party figures are appalled at the composition of the governing alliance. A well-known Likud politician recently accused Netanyahu in front of the cameras of having lost the thread of the coalition negotiations.
In order to return to power, Netanyahu, who has a history of tricking and dividing his political opponents, has given in to the demands of the far-right and the orthodox. Now “King Bibi”, as a US news magazine called him ten years ago, has made himself dependent on extremists and is therefore weaker than ever.
For example, he appoints a man as police minister with extended powers who had been rejected by the army in his youth because of his radical views and who, just a few months ago, had repeatedly caused unrest in Arab neighborhoods with provocative actions. A staunch supporter of settlement expansion in the occupied territories will be responsible for the West Bank, which was previously under the supervision of the army. Netanyahu made sure that parliament passed a law to that effect.
Netanyahu has entrusted the Interior Ministry and, in two years’ time, the Treasury Ministry to a convicted tax fraudster after parliament passed an amendment to the law in a hurry that also allows convicted politicians to serve as ministers.
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