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May 04, 2021 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's attempt to form a new coalition government has failed.
Netanyahu had until midnight today (11 pm in Italy).
Failure to reach an agreement increases the chances that Netanyahu's Likud party will go to the opposition for the first time in 12 years.
Now everything passes into the hands of Israel's president, Reuven Rivlin, who will consult with party leaders elected to parliament in March before deciding how to proceed.
Netanyahu's Likud (right) had won the general election in March with 30 seats, the fourth in less than two years in Israel, and had been commissioned by the president to form the next government. To achieve this, Netanyahu would have had to muster a majority of 61 out of 120 MPs in the Knesset. Since support from ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties was not enough, the prime minister had intensified contacts in recent weeks in hopes of reaching this threshold. But evidently he did not succeed.