NBC - "He’s been here for so many years, and won so many elections, that for so many Israelis it’s difficult to imagine any other reality," said one analyst.
The Benjamin Netanyahu era is over in Israel. After 12 consecutive years in power, and another three before that, the country’s longest serving prime minister will no longer be its leader.
An unlikely coalition that came together to oust Netanyahu survived a confidence vote in the Israeli parliament Sunday, overcoming the final hurdle on its path to unseating him and taking a fragile hold on power.
The new government will now be sworn in, sending Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party to the opposition for the first time in more than a decade.
To rub salt into Netanyahu’s wound, Naftali Bennett, his former protege and a right-wing leader, will serve as the next prime minister, holding office for the first two years of the new government’s term. He will then hand the role to Yair Lapid, the leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party.
The government will be made up of a broad group of Netanyahu opponents that includes the United Arab List, known in Israel as Ra’am, which made history as the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition.
The son of American immigrants, Bennett is a former settler leader whose nationalist politics contrasts with several of the dovish left-wing parties included in his unwieldy coalition. As head of such a disparate clan, he may find it difficult to achieve much beyond ending Netanyahu’s grip on the premiership.
“We will focus on what can be done, instead of arguing over what is impossible,” he said when announcing his deal with Lapid.
Until now Netanyahu had an unrivaled ability to cling to power, through conflict, corruption charges and countless elections. That has finally come to an end, but his legacy — and perhaps his political ambitions — will live on.
Netanyahu, or Bibi, as he is known in Israel, first became....READ MORE
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