Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman on Sunday laid out five preconditions for his joining a potential coalition, consisting primarily of a set of secularist demands that have no chance of being accepted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox allies but were quickly accepted by Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz.
Once a close ally of Netanyahu, Liberman has been a thorn in the prime minister’s side since May 2019, when his insistence on a secularist agenda during coalition-building talks with Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox allies following the April election scuppered the negotiations and led Netanyahu to disband the Knesset and call a new vote.
Relations quickly grew acrimonious, with Netanyahu accusing Liberman of thwarting the formation of a right-wing government and joining the left (though Liberman’s political positions remain hawkish), as well as attempting — unsuccessfully — to destroy his base of support in the subsequent September vote. Liberman instead grew from five to eight Knesset seats. Last week Liberman won seven Knesset seats, as part of a bloc of 62 lawmakers who oppose Netanyahu. The prime minister and his supporters won 58 seats.
Over the past year Liberman has become an increasingly vocal critic of the prime minister, and has recently said repeatedly that “the Netanyahu era is over.”
On Sunday, Liberman listed in a Facebook post his conditions for joining a coalition. The first was guaranteeing a monthly stipend of at least 70 percent of the minimum wage in Israel for all retirees living off old-age pensions or guaranteed incomes. READ MORE