Bon Voyage, Benjamin Netanyahu!
For a moment there it looked like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might have gotten a reprieve. After Netanyahu’s party lost badly in the most recent elections, it looked like he was on his way to ouster. But then the President of Israel unexpectedly asked Netanyahu to form a coalition government, which – if successful – could have kept him in power. The thing is, none of the other political parties want to work with Netanyahu, so we suspected this might end up falling apart for him. It just did.
Benjamin Netanyahu just informed the President of Israel that he can’t make a coalition happen with any of his rival parties. As a result, the President is now going to ask Netanyahu’s election rival Benny Gantz to form a coalition, according to Haaretz. If Gantz can pull this off, it’ll mean that Netanyahu is finally out as Prime Minister.
That will be a big deal for multiple reasons. For one thing, the eternally corrupt Netanyahu has been a close ally of Donald Trump. Since the most recent Israeli election, Trump has publicly distanced himself from Netanyahu, but there’s little doubt that corrupt shenanigans have continued to go on between them behind the scenes. If Netanyahu really is ousted by a Gantz coalition, it’ll mean that Netanyahu will no longer be in any position to help Trump with his dying presidency.
For that matter, if Benjamin Netanyahu is ousted, he won’t be in a position to help himself. He’s in the process of being criminally indicted on corruption charges, which will send him to prison. When Netanyahu was in charge of trying to form a coalition, he could have theoretically tried to use that power to negotiate his own exit in exchange for immunity. But if the Gantz coalition comes to fruition, Netanyahu will simply be out, with zero leverage – and he’ll indeed go to prison.
