By Gil Hoffman, JPost—
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer seeking a government that relies on the outside support of the Ra’am Party (United Arab List), he said Tuesday at a press conference in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu no longer sees any chance of forming a government, although he still intends to maintain his mandate to form a government, which ends on May 4, his associates said.
Instead, he would seek a direct election for prime minister, which will pass if Yamina supports it, Netanyahu said.
“We don’t need Ra’am,” he said. “We need a direct election to form a government.”
When asked if he condemned the repeated attacks on Ra’am by Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich, Netanyahu declined to comment, which angered Ra’am MKs.
“Netanyahu knows our address if he wants to form a government,” Ra’am MK Saeed Alharomi told The Jerusalem Post. “He knows he needs to restrain them.”
Asked about the possibility that another senior Likud figure, such as Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin, would form a government in a rotation with him as prime minister, Netanyahu said that would “disrespect the will of one million voters who cast ballots that said, ‘The Likud led by Netanyahu.’” Continue Reading….
